War Damage Map 1939-45

Rebuilding the Albion Triangle

Walk 3

Teachers will have to prepare this in the class room and then the
children should be taken to stand in the centre of the triangle and look around them
and imagine the changes that have taken place.

This invaluable map was made by the London County Council immediately after the Second World War. It became the basis for the Abercrombie Plan for the Rebuilding of London.

Coloured areas show the widespread bomb damage while the different colours indicate its severity. Some houses were repaired; others patched up temporarily. Even those houses not bombed, deteriorated because there could be little maintenance during the war and were in need of care an attention.

Picture not available on the internet for copyright reasons
This map and other smaller sections reproduced elsewhere,
are taken with permission, from

The London County Council Bomb Damage Maps 1939-1945.

Copies of any particular area can be obtained, for private or school use,
from London Metropolitan Archives who own the copyright.

Comparing these coloured Bombing Maps
with my original back and white photo-copies.

Over forty years ago I found these maps in the lower basement at County Hall, where the sharks now swim. The Architects Department kindly made me black and white photocopies and I used them in several books. Other architects, alerted by my bomb maps, have used them to explain why houses built on forgotten bomb sites, have begun to subside, so the photocopies have been of practical use. In one case an architect, called in to explain a subsiding house, was fifteen feet down and still bringing up complete window frames.

However, I now realise that my maps can tell a false story. The originals are coloured and unfortunately the old photocopiers did not copy the reds. They showed red as white. Therefore areas which were;-

Dark Red Seriously damaged; doubtful if repairable
Light Red Seriously damaged, but repairable at cost,

came out on the photocopies as white. The centres of damage are marked on the maps in Black, Purple and Dark Red, with rings of lighter colours around them. Areas which I have been ignoring for years because they were white, had been, in fact, very badly damaged. Often the coloured maps give a completely different account of any particular bombing incident from my old black and white copies.

The new book called The London County Council Bomb Damage Maps, 1939-1945, ISBN 0 902087 51 7, pub. 2005, is a splendid production and will be consulted as long as London lives. The area on the map around any particular school is only a few centimetres square, but explains the old and new houses on the school doorstep as no other map or writing can do. Walking along the road becomes a never-ending detective story.

The Bombing of Albion Road

The whole area was very heavily bombed from September 1940. Incendiary bombs and high explosives early on, and a land mine fell on Albion Road at the junction with Hawkesley Road. Later, between 23 rd June 1944 and 10 the January 1945, there were no fewer than ten flying bombs and three V2s in the Finsbury Park to Albion Road area alone. Three local flying bombs fell on Defoe Road, Londesborough Road and the triangle by the shopping parade in Albion Road. The damage from these and other smaller events spread blast damage to other houses nearby, so that few houses escaped some effect of the bombs. Many houses were patched up and later repaired properly, but the major incidents led to the building of completely new blocks and even new estates. This bombing map is a key to the reason for many later developments.

The Flying Bomb on Albion Road Triangle

Colour Key References			Flying Bomb Damage at Albion Rd Triangle
	Black -Total destruction
	Purple - Damaged beyond repair
	Dark Red - Doubtful if repairable
	Light Red - Seriously damaged, but repairable at cost
	Orange - General blast damage, not structural
	Yellow - Blast damage, minor in nature
O	V1 flying bomb	large circle
o	V2 long range rocket.	small circle
There will be slight variations in the colours because the original maps are old and the colour balance on computer monitors will vary

The Local Bombing Map of Albion Road

This bombing map shows that almost half of the houses around the Albion Road Triangle and south along Albion Road suffered some form of damage during the Second World War. This varied from Total destruction (Black) and ‘Damage beyond repair’ (PURPLE) to ‘Blast damage, minor in nature (YELLOW). The colour key describes the different levels of damage.

The two flying bombs, in Albion Triangle and Albion Grove were particularly devastating. The following account describes in some detail the effects of the Flying Bomb which fell on Albion Triangle.

Albion Road Triangle and the Flying Bomb

The flying bomb which landed in the Albion Road triangle created devastation all round it.

From the 1936
Ordnance Survey Map

Albion Road Triangle was still like this before the flying bomb struck, with the houses in Albion Road and Clissold Crescent continuing round the Triangle.

(Later maps are still in copyright but if a school has permission to use later maps for educational purposes a similar map of the area could be added here to show the changes.)

Albion Road c1950

Saved Albion rd 1950 600 pix
The bomb site left by the Flying bomb,
photographed in 1950

The last undamaged house on the west side of Albion Road was just outside the picture, to the left. The ends of Clissold Crescent and Carysfort Road had been demolished. The only recognisable thing in the picture is St Mary's steeple. The small white houses in the bomb site are Prefabs in which families would have lived for a number of years before the rebuilding started.

3589
The same view in 2007.
St Mary's steeple can be seen over the top of the far side of Carysfort Road. The last undamaged house in Albion road is seen on the left, just edging into view.

3588

This view shows the cut-off end of the old Clissold Crescent houses, with the backs of the Carysfort Road houses beyond. The last undamaged house in Clissold Crescent can be seen in the background below the branches of the large tree on the left. The backs of the houses in Carysfort Road seen between this and Medway House.

A Description of Flying Bombs

In the wartime section of his huge novel ‘The Music of Time’, Anthony Powell has this passage.

In 1944 Nicholas Jenkins, his narrator throughout the sequence of all twelve books, was an Army Captain based on fire watching duty in the City of London.

   ‘When the Warning sounded, I found my way to the roof at the same moment as Corporal Curtis.
    `I understand, sir, that we ascend into one of the cupolas as an action station.'
    `We do.'
    `I thought I had better await your arrival and instructions, sir.'
    Like the muezzin going on duty, we climbed up a steep gangway of iron leading into one of the pepper pot domes constructed at each corner of the building. The particular dome allotted to us, the one nearest the river, was on the far side from that above our own room. The inside was on two floors, rather like an eccentric writer's den for undisturbed work. Curtis and I proceeded to the upper level.-----.
    The moonlit night, now the melancholy strain of the sirens had died away, was surprisingly quiet. All {anti-aircraft} guns had been sent to the coast, for there was no point in shooting down V. 1's over built-up areas. They would come down anyway. Around lay the darkened city, a few solid masses recognisable on the far side of the twisting strip of water. Then three rapidly moving lights appeared in the southern sky, two more or less side by side, the third following a short way behind, as if lacking acceleration or will power to keep up. They travelled with that curious shuddering jerky movement characteristic of such bodies, a style of locomotion that seemed to suggest the engine was not working properly, might break down at any moment, which indeed it would. This impression that something was badly wrong with the internal machinery was increased by a shower of sparks emitted from the tail. The raucous buzz could now be plainly heard. In imagination one smelt brimstone.
    `They appear to be heading a few degrees to our right, sir,' said Curtis.
    The first two cut-out. It was almost simultaneous. The noisy ticking of the third continued briefly, then also stopped abruptly. This interval between cutting-out and exploding always seemed interminable. At last it came; again two almost at once, the third a few seconds later. All three swooped to the ground, their flaming tails pointing upwards ------.

pp. 152-3, The Military Philosophers,
Book 9 of The Music of Time, by Anthony Powell

For a number of years there were prefabricated houses on the bomb sites and eventually Avon and Medway Houses were built.

The Prefab Houses.
Waiting for the New Flats to ne Built

Albion Road Triangle after the Flying Bomb

This picture of the Gainsborough Film Studios taken in 1945
shows prefabs in the foreground

Rebuilding after the War

South House Repaired After the Bombing

This is South House, The plot was bought by Thomas and William Cubitt, probably so that they could control the building of Albion Road. This they did with their own surveyors and the road building arm if their firm. The houses are very plain and unadorned, somewhat like the very first Albion Road ones that they built, up near the High Street.

Look closely and you will see that there has been a change in the façade. The houses at either end have small pilasters faced with red tiles and with small pitched cappings covered with tiles. In the centre of the block, these have disappeared. The Flying bomb blew in the centre of the façade and when they restored it, the pilasters were not rebuilt. Instead, there is a plain stucco front painted white.

Lintel details in South House, Albion Road.

These were the facades damaged by the flying bomb. No doubt all the glass was broken, but that could be replaced easily. Other damage was more serious. Look at the central pair of lintels above. They are not the same as the others. The two outside pairs have stopped chamfers along the bottom edge. The centre pair have no chamfers. This shows that the blast damaged the centre wall so badly that it had to be completely rebuilt and the windows were replaced with eight pane window frames, not four pane.

Post War Concrete Lintel

Original Cubit Lintel
with a stopped chafer
on the lower edge

The replacement windows were not new. There was no time for that. People were waiting impatiently for anywhere to live.The builders must have been salvaged an old window from some other bomb site and used that. They could not salvage lintels, so they had to cast some new ones in concrete and it was a rush job. There was no time to waste, with people clamouring to be rehoused and a shortage of skilled labour, so they cast the lintels with square edges and did not bother with the stopped chapfers. This would have taken too much time.

The existing end of the Albion Road terrace.

Houses like this used to run round the corner from Albion Road into Clissold Crescent, but the terrace was cut off abruptly by the flying bomb. The end house was repaired and the end wall was rendered to keep out the damp. The chimneys of the existing house and the one next door had been built as one unit, so that one could not be demolished without demolishing the other. Therefore so both were kept and the chimney of the house next door projects from the rest if the wall.

The New Blocks of Flats Built as a Result of the Flying Bomb

Avon House with the end of the Albion Road terrace just visible

Winston Road

The other corner of Winston Road was also destroyed by the blast and a new house built on the site.

Medway House

Clissold Crescent used to continue right round the curve to the corner of Carysfort Road, but it too was cut off abruptly by the flying bomb. Medway House was built on the old bomb site and one can now see the end of Carysfort Road behind it. The end of Carysfort Road also seems to have been affected by the blast as the restore facades are slightly different from their neighbours.

One of the most famous of all pictures of the London Blitz is St. Paul’s Cathedral standing undamaged, surrounded by completely devastated buildings. When Sir Christopher Wren died his son wrote the words for a memorial text which is still to be found in the Cathedral crypt.It can be translated roughly as, ‘If you want to see his memorial, look around you’. In Latin - Circumscrube.

If you want to see the effect of the Flying Bomb on Albion Road Triangle, Circumscube. There could be a plaque on the Triangle to the unnamed civilians who were killed and maimed by that explosion and the new flats would be their memorial.

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