On the evening this day, 28th / 29th November 1940
WWII Durning Rd bomb disaster. Please remember the 166 men, women and children who perished this night 80+ years ago.
Winston Churchill called it " The single worst civilian incident of the war "
Details of the bombing : -
Durning Road in Edge Hill, was not only the site of the Ernest Brown Junior Instructional Centre but it was also chosen as the site for an Air raid shelter during WW2. Its basement, and in paticular its Boiler room with its reinforced ceiling offered protection to the public from the enemy bombs falling nearby.
On the evening of 28th November 1940 the the air raid siren warning was given, a night when Liverpool endured nearly eight hours of bombing from the German Luftwaffe which resulted in leaving 2,000 people homeless in the Picton area.
Local people started making their way towards the shelter. Men, women and children dressed in warm clothing, and mothers wrapped their babies in blankets to protect from the cold night. Two trams stopped outside the building and the passengers joined those already inside the shelter. In all over 300 people entered the basement as the bombs began to fall.
At around 1.55 am on the 29th November the school took a direct hit from a parachute mine aka as a land mine. The building collapsed sending debris straight onto those sheltering in the basement, many people were buried alive. The boiler burst, streaming out hot water, and burst gas pipes alighted. Anyone not killed outright now faced these horrific dangers. Up above, the building was ablaze, and rescue workers struggled to help free the survivors.
During the next two days the rescue effort went on as first the survivors, and then the bodies of the dead were brought to the surface. It became clear that retrieving all the bodies was a grim and hopeless task, and the call was made to cover the area in lime and seal it over. Just as work was about to begin a fireman noticed a hand coming from the rubble, and a 12 year old girl became the last survivor to be saved. The area was then limed and sealed, thus becoming a grave to those that remained.
Also hit during a previous air raid on 20th November 1940 was the Wavertree Botanic Gardens Conservatory / Glasshouse, which was completely destroyed, the surviving plants and flowers where relocated to privatly owned glasshouses and later in 1951 to the Harthill glasshouses at Calderstones Park.
It was later established that the German Luftwaffe was targeting the Edge Hill railway marshalling yard and station along with the sidings nearby.
