Nuneaton &
North Warwickshire
Family History Society
The friendly family history society for all of North Warwickshire
The friendly family history society for all of North Warwickshire
By Celia Parton
Much is known about the bombings of Nuneaton during the Blitz in World War Two (the webmaster’s great-grandfather was killed during it). What is perhaps less well known is that some north Warwickshire villages also suffered at the hands of the German bombers. On the night of 4th/5th June 1941, only a few weeks after the Nuneaton bombings, Grendon, Dordon and Kingsbury were all hit by German bombs and twenty-one persons were killed including seven children.
On that night the Germans were returning from a raid on Birmingham when they decided to unload their unused bombs. The first one fell on Woodside Cottages in Grendon. These were near to Grendon Wood, at the end of Maypole Lane. Here six people were killed, mother and son, Ada Ellen and Sidney George Gardner, Alfred Albrighton and his aunt Jane Mary Gertrude Albrighton, and tragically and ironically, two evacuees, 13-year-old Edith May Kingdon from Dagenham, Essex and 12-year-old Lawrence Brown from Erdington in Birmingham.
Another bomb fell on Rose Cottage in Cart’s Lane, Grendon, killing three members of the same family, Eliza Cart, her daughter Nellie Beatrice and her widowed mother, Ann Atkins.
Two more bombs fell in the close vicinity, one in Baddesley Wood where there were no casualties as there were no houses – only a few large trees were uprooted, and another in Shortwoods, Dordon. Here eight more people were killed, four members of the Egan family (father mother and two children) and three members of the Geary family (mother Florence and her two sons Albert Henry and Kenneth). Also killed at the Shortwoods that night was John Thomas Chetwynd who was an Air Raid Warden doing his rounds.
On the same night two houses in Kingsbury were hit causing the death of three adults and a young child. A house called “St Gennys” on Tamworth Road was hit killing Stan Sales and his mother Mary. His wife Amelia, known as May was pulled alive from the debris. Another house two doors down the road was also hit, killing a young man called Jeff Smith who had gone there to visit his girlfriend. He was playing with his girlfriend’s little brother at the time and both Jeff and the little boy were killed.
These are of course on a much smaller scale than the bombings at Nuneaton, and insignificant compared to the damage and loss of life experienced in the big cities of Birmingham and Coventry, but that night stayed forever in the memory of those who witnessed it.