The local Tv news recently reported that the maps of where the bombs fell on Manchester during WWII are now available online. There is hardly a day when there isn't a story about the war and those who lived through it, and never a day when some Tv channel isn't showing a drama or documentary about that conflict. However this was now new information readily accessible for everyone. It was a revelation especially when you discover a fire bomb fell in front of your own house, or a high explosive bomb landed on the next plot on the allotments up the road. It accounts for why we have hideous cheap post-war buildings in streets of fine old properties. For example Chorlton Post Office a construction of no merit that replaced a Victorian building that was destroyed by enemy action.
The whole of the city is divided up into various pages, and an hour has gone by before you realise you've just been staring at red (incendiary bombs) and blue (high explosives) markings on 80 year old Ordnance Survey maps. The maps also reveal how much of Chorlton was still fields and how many allotment gardens and tennis courts there were.
To keep it relevant to the weblog the picture is of the corner of Hardy Lane, Mauldeth Road West and Barlow Moor Road had shews where an explosive device fell on the 12th March 1940 and exactly a year later several more nearby. Both dates outside the heavy blitz on Manchester 22nd and 23rd December 1940.
Links:
Wartime Bomb Maps of Manchester.
Further stories of wartime bomb damage at Chorlton History......
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