Series: Photographs of bomb damaged buildings

Description

This collection contains photographs and catalogues of buildings damaged by enemy air raid bombing during the World War 2 Blitz.

It primarily covers sites in Bristol, Devon, Dorset, Essex, Hampshire, Kent and Norfolk, although there are some prints for Gloucestershire, Somerset, Surrey, Wiltshire, Isle of Wight, Sussex and Suffolk.

They are original prints, all mounted and with an accompanying description identifying the site. Most but not all are dated. They range in date from 1941 to 1949 but the vast majority of the images fall within the period of 1942-1944.

The images show a mixture of buildings, including houses, public houses, hotels, churches and shops, in varying states of damage and repair. Not all the sites included show obvious signs of bomb damage and may have been taken in order to record a site in anticipation of possible future aerial raids.

The prints are mounted on annotated sheets and are arranged by county. Accompanying them is a catalogue and a card index of bomb damaged buildings. They do not record the prints present in the collection but appear to be an entirely separate and more comprehensive record of buildings that were bomb damaged. The catalogue has 271 pages, covers the whole of England and is arranged by county and then settlement. For each settlement, the affected buildings are recorded, sometimes with the date of the bombing, the extent of the damage and whether a photograph in the National Buildings Record collection is available. The card index has 12 cards and covers Plymouth, Norwich, London, Bristol, Canterbury, Great Yarmouth, Southampton, Exeter and Bath. For each settlement there is a list of buildings affected, the date that they were built, the condition following bombing, repair work required, and a series of unidentified codes.

A handlist is available.

Archival History

The provenance of this collection is not known. It was probably compiled by the National Buildings Record in the 1950s from photographs taken by the Ministry of Works, Air Ministry and other sources.

The collection may have been created on National Buildings Record advice but no other provenance is known. Some of the photographs are stamped Air Ministry or Ministry of Works Crown Copyright on the reverse. Each print has a reference code with a letter code prefix derived from the name of the location of the image.

See also separate MMR collection NBA01/01 which contains files and lists of bomb damaged buildings maintained by the NBR. A folder containing 9 photographs of Swainston Manor, Calbourne which were removed from the Red Box Collection in 2011 - 2012 were added in June 2019.

Content

This is part of the Collection: OWS01 Office of Works and Successors: Ancient Monuments and Historic Buildings

This Series contains the following materials:

Photograph (Negative): 11

Photograph (Print): 606

Photograph (Digital): 595

Catalogue: 1

Index: 1

Rights

© Crown Copyright. Historic England Archive