Former Second World War Civil Defence Building, Hargate and Hempsted, City of Peterborough

Summary

Former Second World War civil defence building, probably a fire watchers' post or air raid shelter, built to serve the neighbouring brickworks.

Description

Former Second World War civil defence building, probably a fire watchers' post or air raid shelter, built to serve the neighbouring brickworks.

MATERIALS: of brick with a reinforced-concrete slab roof.

PLAN: the building is circular-on-plan with a segmental blast wall on the north side.

EXTERIOR: the building is semi-sunken below the level of the surrounding ground surface and embanked with earth. On its north side there are two baffled doorways (one probably an entrance and the other an emergency exit) protected by a segmental blast wall supported by angled buttresses. The walling of the shelter is predominantly blind except for two horizontal observation slits placed immediately below the roof line on the south-east and south-west sides. The reinforced concrete roof now bears slight scarring around its circumference.

INTERIOR: the interior is divided in half into two semi-circular compartments by a brick wall which also supports the roof. The west side of the wall contains a smoke-blacked niche which was probably used to house a candle holder. At the south end of the wall there is a round-headed emergency exit which allowed the occupants of one chamber to move to the other should one of the entrances become blocked. When in use it would have been enclosed by weakly-bonded brickwork which was designed to be easily broken down, but this brickwork is now missing. Dark inclined witness marks on the walls to either side of the doorways probably indicate that the shelter was equipped with roll-down anti-gas curtains.

History

Until the early C20 the British, as an island nation, generally felt safe from foreign attack. However, this illusion was shattered on 16 December 1914 when the battlecruisers of the German High Seas Command bombarded Scarborough, Whitby and Hartlepool, resulting in 137 deaths and 592 other casualties. Six days later a German seaplane made the first attempted air attack on Great Britain, with its two bombs falling harmlessly into the sea off Dover, although a subsequent attack two days later saw a German bomb land and detonate in a Dover garden. Combined with the regular bombing of Paris, it was becoming evident that there was now a clear indication that the German General Staff intended to use their air power to cause mass terror and the collapse of civilian morale.

The scale of the attacks escalated once the Germans embarked upon its Zeppelin bombing campaigns against London on the night of 31 May / 1 June 1915. Civilian damage and damage to property mounted sharply, causing a public outcry over the lack of defences and the provision of shelters. Although shelters were provided on a piecemeal basis in basements, the first purpose-built shelters, along with an effective air warning system, were only introduced after the first Gotha bomber raid against London on 13 June 1917, when 14 aircraft dropped 118 bombs, killing 162 people and injuring 426. Basements, cellars and crypts were also strengthened as communal shelters.

After the First World War civil defence was virtually abandoned until, with the rising threat of German air attacks, the Air Raid Precautions Act (ARP) of 1937 came into force on 1 January 1938, placing a statutory duty on local authorities to provide shelter and anti-gas precautions. The Munich crisis in August 1938 gave new impetus and increased central government control with the enactment of the Civil Defence Emergency Scheme 'Y' in the following month, which saw twelve Civil Defence regions established. The following December approval was given for the Anderson Shelter, the first Government-designed domestic air raid shelter, of which 2,300,878 had been issued by September 1940. The passing of the Civil Defence Act of 1939 also obliged local authorities to install domestic shelters, impose APR design considerations on new buildings and placed a statutory obligation on employers to provide ARP protection in the workplace.

At the outbreak of the Second World War most civil defence structures were housed in pre-existing buildings. Subsequently, specific designs for all types of civil defence buildings were issued by the Ministry of Home Security, with considerable variety in detail and materials occurring as local authorities adapted the official designs or drew up their own. Along with a wide variety of air raid shelters, civil defence structures included: ARP warden posts; control centres; first aid posts; gas decontamination centres; fire watchers’ posts (Fire Guards); ‘Jim Crow’ posts (industrial bomb watchers); National Fire Service garages and fire stations; air raid warning posts and pillars; and ARP gas schools and rescue training sets. Probably the most common type of structure built was the 50 person public shelter of which some 16,747 were built in the Leeds area alone.

Although the main German blitz on British cities ended in May 1941, civil defences were maintained as sporadic attacks continued. It was during this period that many of the adapted pre-war buildings were replaced with purpose-built structures, and eight deep tube shelters were completed in London.

In the summer of 1944 Hitler’s ‘vengeance weapons’ began to target London and the south-east: the pilotless V1 flying bomb or doodlebug (from 13 June), and the V2 long range ballistic rocket (from 8 September). This brought about a demand for more Anderson and Morrison shelters, which were supplied by re-claiming shelters from less threatened areas like South Wales. These attacks finally came to an end on 29 March 1945 as the advancing Allied armies over-ran the rocket launch sites.

The stand-down of the civil defence organisation followed soon afterwards, on 2 May 1945. The demolition of the vast majority of warden posts and the 50-person public shelters commenced virtually as soon as the local authorities obtained permission. Many stood on public roads, pavements and back lanes, forming hazards to vehicles and pedestrians. Where such structures stood on local authority land, they were often retained as storerooms for parks and schools, changing rooms at sports grounds, and some were even converted into public conveniences.

At the outset of the Second World War in Peterborough the local authority embarked of a programme of civil defence construction. By the end of 1939 an organisation comprising ARP wardens, auxiliary nurses, WVS members, rescue and demolition workers and fire-fighters had been put in place while a network of Cleansing and Decontamination Centres, Warden’s Posts, Ambulance Stations, First Aid Posts and Auxiliary Fire Stations had also been established. A programme of communal domestic shelters began with 65 fifty-person shelters in six locations to accommodate 3,250 people, soon increased to 107 shelters for 5,350 and then to 310 shelters for 9,000. Eventually there were shelter places for 30-35,000 people along with Emergency Feeding Centres for 6,000 in seven designated schools. Anderson Shelters had also been issued and a need for more was identified in Summer 1942. Examples of work place shelters included the three concrete shelters built at Farrow’s Works in Fletton to house 500 employees, the 26 shelters constructed at Baker Perkins Westwood Works, some of which were dug into the railway embankment near Spital Bridge, and the old tunnels at the London Brick Works which were refurbished and brought back in to use as shelters. However, despite the presence of factories producing important munitions, Peterborough did not suffer the intensity of bombing that was anticipated, with just eight bombing raids targeting the city, with most of it being over by mid-1941, with only sporadic raids in 1942.

One surviving civil defence building constructed in Peterborough during the Second World War is a brick-built shelter which stands on the corner of London Road and Hicks Lane. Although its semi-sunken form, reinforced concrete roof and blast wall are all indicative of a structure built to resist an incendiary bomb, its exact function is unknown. Its sunken form, which demanded increased man power and expenditure over and above covered trench shelters and surface shelters, indicates that use as a domestic air raid shelter was probably unlikely, while its size and internal sub-division also discounts any probable role as a Home Guard Post. However, as the surrounding area was dominated by brick works at the outset of the War, this suggests a possible use as a fire watchers' post, built to warn of the approach of German bombers. Such posts were generally sited on commercial or industrial premises, and usually manned by employees. However, given its form, a possible role as an air raid shelter cannot be discounted.

Reasons for Listing

The Second World War Civil Defence building standing at the corner of London Road and Hicks Lane in Peterborough, probably a fire watchers' post or air raid shelter associated with the neighbouring brickworks, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* for its unusual and rare circular design of which only three examples are known to exist in England;

Historic interest:

* although it has a utilitarian appearance, it embodies historic and technical values illustrating the all-encompassing nature of total warfare and the experience of the civilian in one of the major conflicts of the C20;

* as a representative example of civil defence provision in England during the Second World War.

External Links

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