White Street
A very strange tale
By Ken Ross
This photograph shows the actual extensive damage and destruction of 6 houses in September 1940. This was taken just a couple of days afterwards from almost the same position as the photograph of my father, sister and I, as we stood beside the Little Globe. After the site was cleared an underground air-raid shelter was built and the rest of the area became an informal playground for the local children.
Truth is stranger than fiction!
The above however is not the end of the story about the bomb, for some 10 years later, in early 1950, there was a developement that proves the point about the truth being stranger than fiction. One day a man had to go up into the loft space of one of the houses opposite to the bomb site. To his horror he discovered a mummified left lower arm and hand with a very unusual ring on one of the fingers. This was reported to the police and after a good deal of publicity a lady came forward from Switzerland who identified the ring as belonging to a lady who had lived in one of the bombed houses. In fact this lady's body had never been recovered. It appeared that sadly she had literally been blown to bits, and her arm and hand had been blown through the roof tiles of the house across the road. Probably at the time the roof was simply repaired with out any thought of anything having gone into the loft space.
Bomb damage in White Street in 1940
From a private collection
This page was added on 29/01/2007.