Comments on: Baedeker raid, 70 years on

By: Jan

Jan — Wed, 14 Feb 2018 02:51:03 +0000

My father (Ian Lewis) was a child living with his parents and siblings on Carrington Avenue. His grandmother lived on Chatsworth Terrace off Poppleton Road. His grandmother’s house was not hit. He told a tale of an air raid warden on his bike being hit by or caught in a bomb blast in the area. Can’t remember if he said whether the school was hit or not. After the raids it was hard to stop the kids from exploring the bomb sites. He remembered getting into trouble for going to the Nunnery Lane bomb site.

By: audrey richardson

audrey richardson — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 17:02:12 +0000

I lived at 20 Blossom Street, I was under the table in our upstairs appartment over Forsellus garage when we heard the bomb whistling down and then a total silence, a crump and then the sounds of falling glass. We waited a few minutes and felt more shudders and then silence. We knew it was the German planes as they had a different sound to our bombers.
Dad made us stay under the table and rushed out, he was upset when he returned and told us the Bar Convent across the road had been hit and people killed. It was a sad night. We went out next morning to go across and see the damage. I was a child of course. it was a sad sight, the Nunnery Lane side of the Convent gone, workmen looking for bodies. In the gardens at the back of Blossom street there was a tree near no. 27 and on it hanging and waving in the wind was part of a black nuns habit, it was a sad sight. To this day you can see the new piece of wall that was put in on the nunnery lane side, it has never faded into the rest of the brickwork.
A school friend and her family were wiped out near Scarcroft School too.
the damage in Bootham was bad also.

By: YorkStories

YorkStories — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 16:51:11 +0000

I certainly counted my blessings when I was (eventually) able to go to sleep, in a peaceful city, an hour or so before the @BaedekerLive tweets would begin to tell of bombs dropping. I also counted my blessings this morning, as I didn’t have to face what Violet Rodgers described the morning after the 1942 raid: “Bootham was a sight to make the historian weep. Glass, glass everywhere …”

By: stephen

stephen — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 05:46:55 +0000

Wonderful words Lisa,all you have to do is add the reek of burning things(like Bonfire Night),the sweating induced by sheer terror,the noise of pulsating engines,the brrrring of machine guns, banging and crumping of bombs,the fear of death ,and you have taken yourself back 70 years.
Lots of ‘midnight oil’was burnt on that night as it was last night,in remembering the awful things that war did to ordinary people.Lets hope we can make sure it never happens again to our country,and count our blessings a bit more than we do.