Discovering more on that bomb that fell on Well Hall Road in 1916

This is one of those stories which are still as they say in the making but with the help of Tricia I think much of the lives of the family who died on Well Hall Road in the August of 1916 will be revealed.

They were the Allen family and they were living at 210 Well Hall Road when the house was almost completely destroyed by a bomb from a Zeppelin.

It was a story that has pretty much been forgotten and surfaces only as a footnote to pictures of the ruined house or in the story of the Zeppelin Raid.

Now I can’t claim much of the story.  It was Tricia who found the picture and Daniel who tracked it down to what is now 290 Well Hall Road in a neat bit of detective work.

And it was also Tricia who found the family in Surrey in 1911 and those they were buried in St John’s and she has promised to go into the Heritage Centre today and dig a bit deeper.

They may be some newspaper accounts of the bombing and an indication where they were buried in the church yard.

It may even be that the Centre holds the employment records for the Arsenal for this is where Mr Allen would have been employed.

And that will be useful for in 1911 he described himself as a domestic coachman and seven years earlier they had been in Cape Town in South Africa.

All of which means there is more to the story and in its telling I hope we will discover more about the tragic event and the family who have pretty much fallen out of history.

Picture; the house on Well Hall Road, 2015 from the collection of Daniel Murphy

*One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 12 ........... the bomb that dropped next door, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-max=2015-08-04T02:30:00%2B01:00&max-results=7

Zeppelins over Well Hall

I have become fascinated by the story of the Allen family who lived just two doors down from us on Well Hall Road and died in a Zeppelin raid on August 25th, 1916.*

Until recently I knew nothing about them or that that their home was destroyed by that air raid.

But Tricia Leslie had uncovered a picture of the war damaged house and Daniel Murphy then tracked it down to what is now 290 Well Hall Road.

And from there Tricia went on to reveal something of the family and the night the bomb fell on Well Hall.

The Allen’s were from Surrey but by 1916 had already spent time in South Africa and New Zealand.

This I know because Tricia had uncovered their census entry for 1911 which showed them living in Surrey but also that their daughter Gladys had been born in Cape Town in 1904, and four years later they were bound on the SS Corinthic for Wellington which left London on February 5 1908.

I guess the journey would have been fairly comfortable given that the SS Corinthic was just six years old.  It was one of those work a day ships which carried freight and passengers and had been built for the route to New Zealand.

Now such globetrotting was not so uncommon and given that Mr Allen was an engineer he would have been part of that generation that went out across the world building and maintaining the machines of empire.

But by 1916 the family was back in Britain and Mr Allen was working at the Arsenal and living in of those brand new homes on the Well Hall estate.

Of course for them that was pretty much the end of the story.

According to newspaper reports of the raid and the subsequent coroner’s inquests the Zepplin that dropped the bomb had taken a random and leisurely route dropping its payload across the south east.

By the standards of the air raids of the Second World War this was a small affair, with just eight people being killed.

But that is not to diminish the loss of life or the damage done and the coroner’s comments reveal the extent to which this was a new type of warfare.

Summing up he said “the interesting point in these cases was as to the safest place.  In each case the bomb appeared to have exploded in the upper part of the house and it seemed that the ground floor and basements were more or less safe, except from falling debris.”**

A fact which was not lost on those in 1940 faced with no air raid shelters.

* Zeppelins over Well Hall, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Zeppelins%20over%20Well%20Hall

**District Times September 1916

Research by Tricia Leslie

Picture; the bombed house today courtesy of Daniel Murphy

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 12 ........... the bomb that dropped next door

This is the continuing story  of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family.*

That bombed house, 2015

Now I never knew that a bomb had totally demolished the house two doors down from us.

But then why should I?  The event occurred in 1916 and there was no one around to recount the tale.

Nor would I have ever known about it had a picture of the destroyed house not surfaced recently.

It was discovered by Tricia Leslie and was taken from the back of the house showing just part of the front wall and beyond it the houses on the opposite side of Well Hall Road.

When I first saw the image I was interested but it wasn’t till Daniel Murphy did some detective work that I made the connection with our house.

Looking at the original and comparing it with that stretch of Well Hall today, the unmistakable block of houses opposite gives the location perfectly.

The houses opposite which offered up the clues

In 1918 it was the home of Mr Frederick John Ward but I have yet not be able to discover if he was there when the bomb fell, nor have I found a newspaper record of the event but the Greenwich Heritage Centre I bet will be able to help.

All of which makes it a nice bit of detective work on the part of Tricia and Daniel and leaves me only to comment that the fire place shown in the ruined house was identical to the one in our front room, but then that was only to be expected, given that to keep costs down the Ministry had quite rightly bought interior fittings in bulk.

Still it’s odd seeing it there and even more so because I in the past I have stood in that very front room where the bomb fell.

But just as I finished the story Tricia discovered it had been a Zeppelin raid on August 25 1916 resulting in all three members of the Allen family being killed.  All were buried in St John's churchyard.

Which was a result but not what I had wanted.

Location;Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; Well Hall Road, 2015, courtesy of Daniel Murphy

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall