Welcome to the Southampton Cultural Services RU-vid channel! Here you'll find a host of videos about Southampton's rich and unique history, art and culture.
Our team work across three venues: SeaCity Museum, Southampton City Art Gallery and Tudor House & Garden. All three museums and galleries are operated by Southampton City Council.
An Uncle of mine was a Home Guard who was manning the Home Guard Station that was positioned at a point between Queensway, and Houndwell place at the time of this raid. Whilst you are correct in your summary of the names of those killed in this particular incident, there may have been, and possibly were many other persons who could not be identified afterwards. It is also more probable that no one actually knew how many people were in the shelter at the time of the raid except for the ARP personnel manning the shelter, and how many of those ARP were survivors or victims? My late Uncles own account from this incident indicates to me that the air attack warning sounded less than 1 minute before the detonation of the device that hit this shelter, and that the local Home Guard were given orders to shoot on site any domestic animals in, or about the shelter sometime afterwards. A point I would also make you aware of is that since this incident, basic standard plants and flowers struggle to grow in the ground in this area indicating the possible presents of a heavy duty cement, my Uncle informed me that after the incident the remains of the shelter were filled with a form of cement to seal it up. The trees that were there at the time, and that are still there now are angled outward as they were dislodged by the explosion when it happened. You can still see those trees today, they are straight in trunk up to four or five feet in height, but then angle hard to the left or to the right pending on how they were affected by the blast at the time.
The last person I could trace in my genealogy was a man born into slavery. I keep hitting brick walls. He ended up teaching himself how to read and write in English and moved to NC
Round stones were also used as part of the wall defence, they would be drop down a shot and mash into a group of attackers, just one of them rolling into troops could do a lot of damage, like if you had archers behind a woven weave shield defence, it would break them up and push the archer out into the open, the one that did not get hit that is, there is a castle in France that had tube shots built into the gate walls. The slope wall if it's the one I am thinking about, then that wall was build to serve the docks
There was a tunnel used to go from the globe pub to the air raid shelter it was sealed up it had all the names above the door who lost there lives how would I know I ived in the globe in the late 70s and use to play in the cellar of me dads old pub the globe in Bernard st
I live in Southampton, grew up in Eastleigh. An old lady I worked with as a teenager, who worked at pirellis during the war, told me that they had to dig a mass grave under The Common Park cos they didn't have time to dig separate ones. I dont know if they moved them all after the war ended or if its still there??
I just purchased one of his maps at an auction online. It’s a 16th century map of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. My husbands many time great grandfather was John Speed. I can’t wait for it to get here!
According, relations, the pulled out a number of bodies, many were not complete, bits were missing, they did clear up what they could, but the fear was some will never be accounted for because the bodies disintegrated and there were bits of bodies that were buried in the shelter
With a direct hit like that, I'm not sure quite how they would tell who everyone in it was. Years ago I knew a man who was in the fire brigade in Southampton during the early part of the war. He mentioned this very incident, & said he got there soon after, & it was horrible. He didn't elaborate further. His recollection was that they quickly filled the trench in, with remains inside. He had relatives who worked on the railways, & one was an ARP Warden. He stated;- - Due to all the old medieval cellars, they had been knocked through, so the wardens didn't have to come up from below ground during air raids. - Locomotives sometimes fell into these old cellars around the city, where the railway line had been built over them. - Locomotives & teams were sent out to try & find bombs that had dropped near railways. His relative didn't like this as vibrations could set off bombs. - He was working in the fire brigade when the docks got hit hard. There was a large warehouse with rum which caught fire. Due to the fumes, the fire crews got drunk. Their commanding officer came down & was going to put them all up on disciplinary charges, until it was found out what happened. - He used to go up into the brick towers of the Royal South Hants Hospital, & report the angles of where he'd seen the bombs drop back to the command center. A friend of his in the fire brigade did the same watch on different times, but didn't like the RSH, as when he went there, bombs fell nearby.
My mother went to the shelter with her newborn baby, the shelter was packed and she became claustrophobic and ran out to head to her mother’s home. Her living account was that the victims were buried in the shelter and left there.
I am an expert on the Blitz of Portsmouth. I knew Southampton was badly hit, and this documentary really shows how severe it really was. My sincere sympathy to the families who suffered. God bless them all.
My Mother was born 1915 and from Shirley. She was cycling home during a raid and said "I should not have been outside but gone to a shelter." A bomb exploded across the road, and she had a fractured femur and huge scarring from the shrapnel.
Unfortunately, as in other towns and cities, Architects & Town Planners (who were supposed to be on our side) contributed greatly to the destruction and vandalism originally caused by the Luftwaffe, with results visible to this day…
Agreed....I come from Portsmouth and grew up playing on bombsites in the late 50's....Now live in Exeter, which Hitler had bombed just to destroy what had been a Beautiful medieval city....The Re-builds unfortunately happened in grey concrete-time, ugly and out-of-place buildings.... after just a few years.....Southampton still had overgrown bombsites around the docks area in the 80's......
Thanks for good short film. Helped explain how things were in Southampton - This in The era of my grandchildren’s Great Grandparents’ life on the home front in wartime Soton
My mom was 13 in 1940, living in a part of Southampton called Bitterne. The house she was born in is still there, I found it on Google Earth. On many levels she never got over what she went through in the fall and winter of 1940. She met my dad, a US Navy sailor from Los Angeles in 1944 when she was in the WAAF, and came to America in 1950. Landed in New York City, then the train all the way to California where she lived for the next 52 years. She died on 6 October 2002 & we all still miss her.
"Bitterne" Where I was born! Mum told me about the various raids on that part of Southampton, and how she had to WALK every day into the town Centre - to Plummers, opposite Watts Park, where she worked as a hairdresser and beautician.She was eventually bombed out from there, and had to move north for work. One thing she remarked on was how BEAUTIFUL the High Street looked in those days (with trams going under the Bargate) - until it was virtually wiped out by the Luftwaffe. SO much was destroyed in that horrid war - all thanks to the evil ambitions of one man. I have HUGE respect for that generation - and feel sometimes that they were in many respects betrayed, somehow.
@@marvinc9994 @marvinc9994 You think it was one Man? It was caused by the European Royals and Their bankers, fighting over colonies, after ww2 We were doing the same as the Nazis and killing millions of Africans to try and take Our colonies back, killing Men Who fought for Us in the war ( the mau mau for example). Hitler wanted to copy Us, He admired the way We brutalised and enslaved India, He is quoted as saying that They wanted to do the same in Russia. WW1 was caused by Germany wanting a slice of middle Eastern oil, read about the Berlin to Baghdad railway They were building.
I remember the yanks at this camp as they always handed out chewing gum to us kids playing cricket on the edge of the park & giving us a Christmas party with a small gift from Santa Claus
I recently bought one from someone who had no idea what it was. Would have been nice in your video for you to show the skirt lifter in more detail, also given us the name of the maker etc.
An excellent telling of a little known and sad part of our local history. I have walked by the plaque often and always spare a thought and pay my respects. A few years ago a mate and I went on a "Southampton Blitz" guided tour which took us to many unknown and often overlooked and forgotten shelters. There are many tales like this that deserved to be told and remembered. Thanks for this one...
Also in that shelter were some Edwin Jones staff,who couldn't get into the Edwin Jones Shelter.Anold man told me that a jacket had been blown up into a tree.It had been left there,but after a few weeks it was taken down as the arms of the jacket were flapping in the wind,and scaring some people
We found one of these (though rather less fancy) in my grandmother's house and was curious to learn more. It was with some trepidation that I typed the search term into RU-vid! Thank you for the video.
I'm glad your RU-vid search found us! The next step is to try your grandmother's skirt lifter out in real life- you just need to get hold of a crinoline!
