London bomb damage

[Jonesy]

Does anyone know of a source of information of streets / property bombed during WW2? Might be useful to explain why addresses on BMD certificates are no longer to be found...

[Jan1954]

Hello Jonesy,

The National Archives has a Bomb Census Survey, which could be a starting point.

[Peter Goodey]

Posted only yesterday...

http://www.british-genealogy.com/for...5&postcount=10

[Chris Doran]

A lot certainly went courtesy of Luftwaffe Demolitions Inc, but I suspect much more suffered at the hands of local councils redeveloping Victorian properties beginning in the 1960s.

Pre-WW2 London "A-Z"s appear regularly for a few pounds on a certain well-known auction site (search for "London Atlas"). I and others here have a number of these, and someone will usually find all but the smallest terrace or back-street. Many Local Studies Libraries in the London area have a run of fat Kelly's London Directories which list all but the smallest streets, though only businesses are named.

The "Victorian London A-Z Street Index" website has a list back to 1749, though there is a big gap between 1899 and 1997. The Rayment road name changes site is also useful. There are several others.

[Peter Goodey]

No dates are mentioned and the major renaming and renumbering exercise of 1888 after the LCC was established may be relevant.

[Jonesy]

The address I'm interested is 21 St John's Grove, Richmond, and a birth registered there around 1908.

The Post Office website only shows numbers 7 to 14 for that street, so I'm wondering whether property was hit there.

[Peter Goodey]

Ah. The problem with the question, and therefore the answers, is that Richmond was in Surrey until the 1960s when it was incorporated into Greater London. It was never in the LCC.

[Chris Doran]

Referring to the aforementioned London atlases, St John's Grove, Richmond, was chomped in half by the creation of Twickenham Road as a westward extension of Lower Mortlake Road. Twickenham Road is on a 1939 map, so in this case the Luftwaffe are innocent. Annoyingly, the atlases tend to be undated so I can't give an exact date, but St John's Grove was still all there in 1912.

From Kelly's 1902 London Southern Suburbs directory, I make No 21 to have been on the south side of St John's Grov. near the junction with Kew Foot Road. But from the aerial view, that side of the road has been completely demolished.

Richmond Local Studies' website might be worth a visit.

[Jonesy]

Thanks Chris; that's really useful.

[Chris Doran]

You're welcome. It occurs to me that the spot where I reckon No 21 was is now a bit of scrubland (south of the white cars on Multimap). It's possible that this is relatively recent, and No 21 survived Twickenham Roading. It might be worth contacting Richmond Local studies who should have a large-scale map and more detailed directories.