I was born in the Royal Northern Hospital, Holloway at 3.20 in the morning on the 28th December 1944. Being a Thursday that made me a child with ‘far to go’. How true. 11 days later, just after noon on 8th January 1945, I was blown up by a V2 rocket - a Vergeltungswaffen as the Nazi High Command liked to call them.
Of course, I shouldn’t have been London at all. The local Air Raid Precautions officer had arranged for my mother and I to be evacuated to Dunmow in Essex - but with the weather being so terrible and my father at home on embarkation leave before being shipped off to the Middle East, my mother decided to stay put. Taking air raid precautions into her own hands she defied Hitler and his crumbling Reich by placing a shove ha’penny board over the top of my cot. “Just in case” she said. I was not consulted about any of this.
A SHOVE HA’PENNY BOARD
Shove Ha’penny is a simple game of skill played on a stout wooden board about 40cms by 70 cms - although in those days it would have been feet and inches. Some at the time would have said that it was our right to use feet and inches that we were fighting for. In the game of Shove Ha’penny 5 coins (the eponymous halfpennies) are knocked up the board using the heel of the hand - the intention being to lodge them in one of a number of ‘beds’ marked out on the board. Hours of endless fun are guaranteed if absolutely the only other thing you have to do is paint the gutters or put butter onto the cat’s boil.
The V2 landed at the top of Sydney Road, about 200 yards from where I was fast asleep, in my cot, under my shove ha’penny board. The blast from 1 ton of Amatol high explosive blew down a row of houses and smartly removed our front door and most of the windows. It also brought the ceiling of my bedroom crashing down on top of me and my shove ha’penny board.
My grandfather who counted himself a bit of an expert on these things said that we were lucky that it wasn’t a V1 ‘doodle bug’ that landed in Sydney Road. Whereas the V2 hit the ground at supersonic speed and buried itself before blowing up, the V1 simply fluttered to earth when it ran out of fuel and blew up on the surface, flattening houses on all sides. My grandfather knew all about V1s having been chased up the Seven Sisters Road by one when he was cycling home from work. During the air raids of the earlier part of the war, instead of joining the family in the Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden, he would sit outside in a deck chair giving a running commentary as the bombers came over…
“It looks like they’re going for the gas works again! Hampden Road has been hit and there’s a nasty fire brewing up at George’s old school … here comes another one now!”
My grandmother said afterwards that she couldn’t decide what was worse. Enemy action or my grandfather carrying on about it…
The V2 rocket that fell onto Sydney Road just after midday on the 8th December 1945 took a number of lives. It was the end of the school Christmas holidays, it was freezing cold and most people were indoors. They were killed. A decorator who had been working on one of the houses in Sydney Road counted himself lucky. He normally went home for his lunch at 1.00 o’clock. On that day he decided to leave at 12.00. He was walking up the street when the rocket hit and he survived… and so did I, underneath half a ton of plaster and lath and my shove ha’penny board.
When I was a little older my grandfather told me later all about the V2 that fell on Sydney Road, Hornsey that morning in January 1945. He said that it was travelling so fast that the first thing he heard was the boom of the explosion. The whistle of it arriving came seconds later. I couldn’t argue with him. He was actually there when it happened. I didn’t see a thing. I was underneath a shove ha’penny board.
– from Martyn Day
Comments
I was 6 years old and lived at No 39 Sydney road when the V2 rocket struck in January 1945.....at the moment of impact I was in the alley that linked Sydney Road to Turnpike Lane...with my friend Stanley Farrant(whose father owned the sweetshop in Turnpike Lane)
Doug Winter on 2010-09-09 17:02:03 +0000A fellow survivor! I remember that alley that linked the streets to Turnpike Lane. It was - and still is - known as "The Passages" and when I was older I would walk down there to the Co-op on the corner, rationbook in my hand and my mother's 'divi' number in my memory. 60 years on I can still remember that 6 digit number.
Compost King on 2010-09-23 11:55:33 +0000To Doug Winter, you mentioned Stanley Farrant, did you know he moved to Southend on Sea with his parents, but was killed by a man who tried to gatecrash his step daughters birthday party, he died a year and a day and 4 hours after the attack, so the attacker got away with murder, or so we thought
Dave Bruce on 2010-10-15 10:22:27 +0000Hi Martyn, I run another neighbourhood website, Harringay Online. One of our members came across your story and photo. I'd very much like to add them both to our Harringay history section. Could you let me know if you're comfortable with that? ( hugh@harringayonline.com).
You're welcome to join the site and look at our archive of old photos and stories from the Harringay diaspora. We have members from Australia, North America, Europe and some great stories including one from a member recounting his Wightman Road childhood in the 1920's. We're hungry for more!
Hugh Flouch on 2011-01-06 07:01:40 +0000I am looking for information regards 5 children found alone in a bombed house in Harringay 1944 their surname was Geen. Their mother was sent to prison for neglect and the children taken into care . Mothers name was Susanna Geen nee Phillips. Has anyone ever come across this story which was reported at the time in the newspapers . I have no exact date.
Alex. MIlls on 2011-08-28 19:23:52 +0000Add a comment