These pages detail a few bits and pieces of Air Raid Precautions/Home Front artefacts from my collection, which I have assembled over the past 25 years. In recent years I have become more aware of how scarce such pieces of history are becoming. This is partly compensated for by people now being generally more aware of the junk in their attics and sheds and wanting to save it for posterity, or sell it to collectors such as myself.
After the war, many such A.R.P. 'swords' were turned into ploughshares; stirrup pumps watered gardens, incendiary bomb scoops became coal shovels, fire axes chopped firewood, gas rattles became bird-scarers, uniforms became gardening clothes and a generation of children grew up playing soldiers wearing civil defence helmets (myself included).
Right: Morrison table shelter (used post-war as a potting bench in a nursery), with wartime stirrup pump, gas masks, warden's helmet and household artefacts. The black-out paper on the right-hand window pane is original wartime.
I remember running up and down the corridors of my primary school ringing an old A.R.P. hand bell to signal the start and end of lessons; up until 1985, the school's fire alarm was actually a wartime Type 447 hand-operated air raid siren!
The larger artefacts are also disappearing; air raid shelters are becoming less common as property developers clear sites for new construction work.
Shortly after the war, air raid sirens were sold off en masse, often to the companies that originally manufactured them, for salvage and re-use of parts. The National Fire Service took over control of many sirens, using the 'Raiders Passed' signal to summon part-time firefighters to their stations in the event of fire. Large factories also used them as their hooters. [1]
Soon after, it was realised that there was still a need for attack warnings due to the threat of nuclear strike, so a new system of sirens was probably installed. Whether any wartime sirens remain in their original position is uncertain.
At right is shown an air raid siren situated on a railway bridge near Waterloo Station in London. It is more likely to be of Cold War than wartime vintage, but it serves as a reminder of the sorts of things that were common during those dark days that have vanished from sight, and soon, from memory.
Move your mouse over the image to see how the siren might have looked if it was there in 1939!
References
- HO 186/2716