John Lewis emailed Northwest 6 with a memory of the bombing of West Hampstead during the Second World War:
I was staying with my grandparents at 25 Gladys Road NW6 towards the end of WW2 when a V2 came down about 250m away in Iverson Road. I was covered in soot, dust & broken glass but unharmed. Can anyone tell me when this happened & what the casualty figures were? I vaguely recall that there’s a memorial in Fortune Green cemetery.
I found more on this courtesy of the Camden New Journal:
Amid the freezing days of January 1944, in West Hampstead, Gladys Cox took a look at the effects of the first V2 bombs, the sinister, silent rockets that took just four minutes to arrive.
“After lunch, it stopped snowing, and as the air was invigorating we walked, or slithered in the slush, down to Iverson Road,” she recorded. “Here, rows and rows of small houses had been blasted from back to front; doors, windows, ceilings all one.
“Whole families were out in the street standing beside the remains of their possessions, piled on the pavements waiting for the removal vans; heaps of rubble everywhere, pathetically showing bits of holly and Christmas decorations.”
I can't find a reference to a memorial in Hampstead Cemetery. If anyone can shed any light on this or on John's request for casualty figures, please post a comment below or email Northwest 6.
2 comments:
I am aware that there is a memorial to the soldiers from the area that died during WW2 in Hamstead cemetary, however I am not sure it has any mention of local bombings.
A local resident told me about a bombing on Agammemnon Road, does anyone have any information about that?
http://474towin.blogspot.com/2008/02/memories-from-second-world-war.html
http://474towin.blogspot.com/2008/05/when-hampstead-borough-was-bombed-in.html
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