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Anniversary today of V2 rocket landing in Chiswick .

It was pretty frightening living in Chiswick during World War Two and especially during 1944.A document listing the many bombs that fell in the Area exists. It's a special booklet at Chiswick Library compiled I believe by the local Civil Defence Unit. It's beautifully handwritten...and very comprehensive.Chiswick became littered with demolished and wrecked houses that stood around for many a year. After a seeming lull ...February 1944 onwards saw an increase in the noise of distant bombing.A row of 3-4 houses in Wolseley Gardens ...opposite the junction with Whitehall Park Road ..were bombed badly one day in that February and some 4-5 residents lost their lives.  I was 5 years old living opposite and recall a long line of ambulances lining the street back to Harvard Hill.But today is the anniversary of the day in September 1944 that the first German  Rocket (V2) came at high speed (and seemingly unguided) across the Channel.. over London.. and landed in the middle of the road in Staveley Road.. demolishing and wrecking houses and some residents.It's arrival alarmed the Goverment..who described the incident as a Gas Pipe explosion... to allay anxiety!I recall my father taking me to see the gapping hole in Staveley Road.. a memory never forgotten. My father was in the Local Home Guard because of the nature of his employment.The V2 memorial is located in Staveley Road and no doubt there  will be visitors there today.

Jim Lawes ● 1474d5 Comments

Thank you for that timely reminder of the V2 bombing in Staveley Road, Jim. I have visited the memorial there, and it is very moving to think of such death and destruction being unleashed upon a quiet, residential neighbourhood such as Staveley Road. I suspect we are of a similar age, though I did not live in London as a child, but grew up in a small town on the north-west coast where the main industry was shipbuilding, so we too had a few visits from Hitler's bombers, and I remember as a child playing on a bomb-site in the middle of our town where lives had been lost and houses destroyed. Unlike Staveley Road, there is no memorial there today, just a car park.

Colin Jordan ● 1474d

See the bomb damage map in the Chiswick Timeline installation under the railway bridge by Turnham Green station.

Peter Evans ● 1474d

Where this row of terraces suddenly ends, is where a V2 rocket landed. It has family significance.https://maps.app.goo.gl/BWfefxS5SBpJMn4C8?g_st=ic

Russell Pearson ● 1474d

Interesting that they rebuilt the Victorian houses in Wolseley Gardens (albeit without the decorative stone bits), whilst other roads have obvious infill from a later date.

Vivienne Cox ● 1474d

Two wreaths were placed at the memorial this evening at 6.44pm, the time when the rocket fell in 1944. One is from the descendants of Ada Harrison, who died in the blast, and one from the Brentford & Chiswick Local History Society who coordinated the creation of the memorial working with the Battlefields Trust in 2004.

Valerie Bott ● 1474d