Tragedy on my doorstep, part 2

Not too far from where I live, just a few stops along the Northern Line, is a station called Oval. It is so named because it is quite close to Kennington Oval where cricket matches are held, presumably in the summer months... I recently took a train to this station for a very different reason. I was looking for evidence of an event that occured in 1940, but it was not until I was writing this & my previous blog that I realised the two events occured almost exactly 24 hours apart. The night after the people of Balham lost 67 of their own to a German bomb, the people of Kennington were similarly struck, but this time the cost was even higher.

Unlike Balham Station, the local authorities were loath to allow people to take shelter at the Oval Underground. The station had been completed, but never put into use, which wouldn't have precluded it from being used as a shelter. The barbed wire, which the authorities had placed around it, however, did prevent the local population from seeking refuge on the platforms as so many thousands of Londoners did that autumn.

The 'lucky' few who had a garden large enough to hold an Anderson Shelter, would stay in their own private place, about the size of a small bathroom, open to the elements, often flooding in heavy rain, and with just a few inches of soil over the top of a curved, corrugated roof to protect them. They did, none-the-less, provide some modicom of privacy.

For the rest of the population who wanted to feel that little bit secure during the nightly bombing raids of the Blitz, there were the public air-raid shelters. These shelters were in a 'trench formation', and were similar to those which were photographed on Clapham Common...


The trenches were covered in cement slabs, covered in a layer of sandbags & soil, and contained wooden benches. The amenities were menial, based on the assumption that a bombing raid would last 1-3 hours and people wouldn't need much in the shelters for such brief periods. In reality bombing raids often continued in waves all night, and when they were brief, the people were loath to relocate to their beds, only to be woken a short time later to return to the shelters... it was more likely that the average person would spend 12 hours at a time, sitting on wooden benches, in damp conditions (there are accounts of the mould & moss growing on the cement ceilings). They were prone to flooding, and with no lavatories on site, they smelled apalling most of the time! (An account of a similar trench shelter in nearby Wandsworth mentions a bucket in the corner behind a hessian 'curtain' for use as a toilet) People would smoke in the shelters as there was no sense of this being a dangerous activity at the time.


None-the-less, people felt safer when they were under the ground, even just a few feet, and so night after night they returned to the apparent safety of the public air-raid shelters which criss crossed the playing fields of Kennington Park.

On the night of 15th October the trenches were filled with women, children, men, the elderly & the infirm - families in general - & they had no hope when the bomb made a direct hit on the north east corner of the trenches. At the time the authorities were overwhelmed by the appalling scene which they came upon. Not only were there injured & dying people trying to escape the nightmare, there were body parts strewn for many feet in all directions... to make matters worse it had been wet recently & the soil in which the trenches were built was unstable, making it almost impossible to dig out survivors. After a night of rescue & recovery, it was agreed that there was nobody left alive in the collapsed trenches, and with recovery workers in danger of being suffocated by the unstable soil, it was agreed to call of the recovery excersize after a couple of days. The unrecovered bodies were covered in lime, and covered over, and it is estimated that there are the remains of approximately 50 people still under the ground.


I visited this site on a bitterly cold day, in january, to see the normal activities of people... folk walking dogs, children on scooters, parents with youngsters, a group of young people playing football... It is hard to imagine that these daily leisure activities go on over the last resting place of so many people, who, just 70 years ago were doing the same things!

There is now a memorial stone in the park, quite close to the site of the bomb landing. It bears a beautiful inscription, a qupte from the poet, historian & author, Maya Angelou: "History, despite it's wrenching pain, cannot be unlived but if faced with courage need not be lived again."


Let us hope that more people learn the history of this beautiful park, and remember... & do what they can to prevent it happening again.

This blog entry is dedicated to the estimated 104 people who lost their lives that night, & the countless people of Kennington who's lives were never the same again as a result.

Tragedy on my doorstep - pt 1

While I have been looking into the history of Clapham during WWII, I have learned of two horrific incidents which occured during the Blitz, and both of which took the lives of many civilians doing their best to just get from one day to the next. One was in nearby Balham Tube Station, a reasonably short walk from where I live, and the other was at Kennington Park, just a few tube stops from Clapham.

The Balham disaster happened just before 8pm on the night of 14th October, 1940 & cost the lives of 67 people, although the modest plaque which currently commemorates this tragedy does not take into account 3 Undergroud workers who died amid the citizens seeking refuge that night. A series of specific circumstances caused the casualties, although none of them died from the initial bomb blast, nor shrapnel, nor even - as one might expect - as a result of fire. The victims were either crushed in the panic to leave the station, or drowned in a slurry of water, sewerage & mud. The word horrific is used a lot these days, but I think it applies to the way these 67 people died.


The initial bomb blast created a masive crater in Balham High Street, breaking through to the platform below, & rupturing water, sewerage & gas pipes. The surge of water caused the crater to enlarge, and washed thousands of litres of slurry (including raw sewerage) into the tunnel below. We know the crater grew quickly as a bus driver, who was in the vicinity of the blast, was concussed & slightly injured, so he parked his bus near the crater, and sought medical attention from a nearby first aid station. While he was being treated the crater grew enough to swallow his bus. Dramatic photographs of this were in most national newspapers the next day, although details of casualties were suppressed in order to both deny information to the enemy, and maintain morale in the general public.


There are estimated to have been up to 500 people sheltering in Balham Station that night, although more conservative estimates suggest it was closer to 200, the popularity of the Underground platforms as air-raid shelters, and extensive photographic evidence show Tube stations crammed with families, althogh at that hour commuters were not travelling through the station.

At the first sign of a bomb blast many people surged towards the the escalators & the exits above. The first casualties probably were due to suffocation & being crushed in the stampede... The majority of deaths, however, were due to drowning...

You might ask how it is possible to drown on an Underground platform? Anyone who has ever visited London has travelled on the tube, and anyone who's travelled on the tube knows those tunnels go on & on for ever! Surely the water & mud were simply siphoned off into those long, wide tunnels? Wrong.

The Northern line, which runs through Balham, also runs directly under the River Thames, close to the Embankment & Charring Cross Stations, and the government were fearful that a catastrophic flood could occur if the line were breached close to the river, especially at high tide. For this reason many of the stations in the Northern Line were fitted with water-tight doors, and as one of the lowest stations on the line, Balham was one of them. The very system that was supposed to prevent the people at Balham from drowning in the waters of the mighty River on which London is built, is the very reason the deluge was able to fill the area so quickly.


This year sees the 70th anniversary of this tragic event, but so few people who travel through the station will even be aware of the significance of the date. It is just one, of so many tragic & remarkable stories of London World War II. I, for one, will be very aware of the date, & intend to remember the 67 people who lost their lives to a Nazi bomb, and a sad twist of fate.