I realised late last night that, in writing yesterday’s account of the air raid on North-East England in August 1940, I had forgotten to mention the reason why I started reading about this particular event. I think it might be interesting to a few people so have decided to put up a short postscript today.
My Uncle George, my late father’s older brother, lives in the picturesque coastal village of Alnmouth in Northumberland. It’s a lovely little place, not far from the market town of Alnwick (which in 2002 was voted the best place to live in Britain by Country Life magazine; it’s always been popular with the huntin’ shootin’ fishin’ crowd). The countryside around is spectacularly beautiful and full of historical interest; Alnwick Castle is particularly interesting. Alnmouth itself is a small port, with a number of splendid pubs and places to eat, and is well worth a visit if you’re in the area. In fact, I intend to move to that part of the world when I retire (if I live that long).
Anyway, Uncle George lives in Argyle Street in the centre of Alnmouth but I was quite surprised to see that the street has a few modern dwellings when virtually every property in the town is quite old, most of the others being of traditional stone construction like so many houses in Northumberland. It turns out that Argyle Street was bombed during World War II and that the new houses were built to replace several that had been destroyed.
It seemed strange to me that the Luftwaffe would bother bombing a tiny place like Alnmouth, so I decided to see what I could find out about the event. Knowing a little about the huge raid I described yesterday, I assumed that it might have been a German bomber involved in that particular raid, jettisoning its load in order to evade an RAF fighter. So I found as many books as I could and started reading about the Battle of Britain, which I found fascinating. Hence yesterday’s post.
However, it turns out that the bombing of Alnmouth in fact took place over a year later, on Saturday 8th November, 1941 at 19.20:
Two bombs on Alnmouth Village; one on a house in Argyle Street, the other in the roadway (a cul-de-sac). People trapped – still digging for four adults and three children believed buried. Later – five missing presumed dead, two died in hospital and twenty were injured. The bodies of a woman identified, also that of a man believed to be a Major Hawkes. Another woman’s body recovered later. Three houses demolished, eleven uninhabitable and many others damaged badly.
The bombs killed seven people, in fact; one man and six women. It was clearly a traumatic event for the people of the village and one which has left a scar to this day.
At that time in the evening in November it would have been dark, and it is thought that the bombing must have resulted from a failure to maintain the wartime blackout that was usually strictly enforced. Initially the blame was attached to two buses at terminus in Argyle Street whose headlights were thought to be reflecting in the water.
It’s still not clear what this plane actually was or what it was doing there on its own. It might have been on a reconnaissance mission, although that seems unlikely given that it was dark and would have been dark for some time; the sun would have sets around 16.15 at that time of year in Alnmouth, three hours before the bombs were dropped. It is more likely to have been part of a larger raid going elsewhere that noticed a light and went for what they call “a target of opportunity”.
PS. Almnouth is just a few miles North of Acklington, which featured prominently in yesterday’s post.
