by the First ResidentsBS3 Heritage Group for Futures Past
Less than a hundred years since its establishment, our community of streets came under its greatest threat. The outbreak of war with Hitler’s Germany in 1939 was only two years old before its impact moved across from the battlefields of Western Europe to the streets of Bristol, in what became known as the Bristol Blitz.
At its height between January and April 1941, approximately 10,000 high explosive bombs were dropped in the city. Bedminster and our cluster of streets was not spared.
On January 3rd 1941 Stafford Street was hit with a single scatter bomb that reduced homes to rubble. There were 6 fatalities: Frederick Buckland, three members of one family, Gertrude, James and Grace Jones, John Cobley and Henry Bush. Their ages ranged from 21 to 70.
For those others who survived, there was a little time to grieve for the loss of neighbours on the streets. People had lost their homes, belongings and precious memories. The urge to search to find anything was overwhelming.
Nearby streets also felt the blast and the impact on their lives. In Little Paradise, young Arthur Smith was part of a family trying to keep themselves safe under the onslaught.
He remembers watching the German planes coming across the city to drop their deadly payload. His family had a few lucky escapes. Once in Little Paradise when the air raid sirens went off, they didn’t have time to get to the nearby air raid shelter and had to go round to his grandmother’s house and get underneath the kitchen table! Arthur, now 88, has more to tell from those momentous times.
At the start of the war, several hundred people had lived in the area of Little Paradise, Leicester Street and Stafford Street. Although many had survived, when the end came in 1945, the community had not. Stafford Street never recovered its residential role and homes still standing in Leicester Street and Little Paradise were doomed.