500kg of high explosive did this at the same time as the row of houses that used to stand right up to the traffic lights on Waterloo Road. School out then. This was I think, on the night of 27th April 1942; the same night Drayton Road and St Martins corner was taken out, Greenhills Road, lost 5 houses. St Mary's lost a whole side of the Road, The entire Potter family died as did Ethel Jopp at No 6, a street halved, I can see where that row was from our house, it's now rather drab prefab post-war garages. St Martins had it's entire top end shredded by the blast, These were big "Villa" styled houses, One of the top ones collapsed onto the Anderson shelter in the back garden, Bernard Hubbard a 10 year old school boy, quite probably a pupil here was in it. Bernard Hubbard: "That particular day, while we were in the shelter, we suddenly heard ‘planes and then bombs dropping like rain. My house collapsed on to the shelter and my father’s head was very, very badly damaged. There was so much blood and he died in the shelter. For two and a half days my stepsister, my mother and me sat in the shelter. We were up to our necks in water because a water main had been hit and as a result everything had become flooded. I was only ten years old at the time and I felt I was going to drown. The air-raid wardens finally dug us out. We then discovered that not only had my Dad died in the raid, but many children in the street had as well. Many of these children had been my friends." An amazingly forthright and sobering view of what happened i thought. textract taken from: Bernard Hubbard, WW2 People's War' ('WW2 People's War is an online archive of wartime memories contributed by members of the public and gathered by the BBC. The archive can be found at www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar') Have a look it's very good. This of course now the back of the Spar shop, people of a certain age, probably over 30 will remember it being a swimming pool as well, it had a really high diving board that I never dared use, those "no petting/spitting/smoking/bombing signs" and enough chlorine to turn your eyelids inside out, but it was ace. Photographic original from a print donated by Carol. Credit: George Swain.