Wansteadium Blitz project, 14 Oct 1940: Elmcroft Ave, Southview Drive

On this night in 1940 at 8.19pm, incendiaries dropped by German planes caused many small fires on Elmcroft Avenue and Southview Drive in Wanstead. Then at 10.58pm, high explosives injured three people in Woodlands Avenue. At 11.15pm, three houses were damaged, also by high explosives, on Aldersbrook Road between Blake Hall Road and Park Road.

Pie and smash: It WAS arson

Police have confirmed the rumours which have been circulating Wanstead that the attack on Robins Pie and Mash shop was arson, which may well mean that it wasn’t a brick but a petrol bomb thrown through the window. They have also said, according to the Wanstead Guardian, that there were attacks on three consecutive nights – Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.

Introducing the Wansteadium Blitz project

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Seventy years ago, for people living in Wanstead, like all areas of London, each day must have seemed like a been a daily dance with the possibility of having a bomb landing on your house. Records show detailed times and addresses of where the bombs fell during the traumatic few months from September 1940 until May 1941, when that particular phase of the Blitz stopped. Flying bombs and long-range rockets were to arrive later in the war, but it’s the Blitz and the civil defence which it inspired which captivates such strong emotions.

As the table below shows, by this date in October 1940, several streets in Wanstead – part of Churchill’s constituency – had already taken a pounding. But even at this point – six weeks into the bombing – things were only just beginning.

For us today it’s hard to imagine the stresses this must have placed on daily life. As an exercise in what that uncertainty might have felt like, over the next few months, Wansteadium will be recording those days on which parts of Wanstead were hit. You are welcome to join in – particularly if you know exactly where or can even photograph where a bomb hit on a particular street. (Clue: it’s usually quite obvious where the gaps in the older houses are.)

The details for this project have come from It Happened Here – the Story of Civil Defence in Wanstead and Woodford 1939-1945 by Stanley Tiquet. Thanks to the local studies department of Redbridge Libraries for their advice.

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Hadley House, arrivederci

Every starter somewhere is a final After Eight somewhere else. As Wanstead tries out its new steak house, longtime favourite Hadley House has shut up shop forever. A notice in the window announces it will reopen later this month as an Italian restaurant. Feel free to opine here.

UPDATE: Mark Bentley was first to report the news, saying:

wanstead restaurant merry go round continues. New Queens place rammed all day yesterday. Hadley House now closed for good. End of era.less than a minute ago via webMark Bentley
markb999

Luke Morton points out in a comment to this post: “I think the words ‘Open from 21st October 2010’ might’ve been enough!”

It’s a fair point – the language of the notice is, shall we say, translated by an online tool flowery? In case you can’t make it out on the picture above, it is:

“l’infinito is a brand new Italian restaurant with the age-old Italian passion for taste, art and pleasure. It is the portrait of the Italian cuisine that brings the best of our hospitality to one unique environment… Our intention is to offer you the best that we as Italians can find when we sit at a table, and we hope to inspire you to eternalize this moment with the best of this infinite now.”

Wansteadium reader Mick adds, also in a comment on this post:

Maybe just as well. We used to love Hadley House but the quality of the food has been disappointing on the last couple of visits. Would welcome another Italian, we used to have three: the curiously named Papillon (now Applebees) which was great, the one that is now 62 Spice and the one opposite Snaresbrook station.