115 to 120 Rosebery Street, Swindon

Image: © Brian Robert Marshall Taken: 27 Sep 2008

In contrast to many other towns and cities in the UK such as Bath, Bristol, Coventry, Exeter and of course London, Swindon largely escaped the attentions of Hitler’s Luftwaffe between the years of 1939 and 1945, largely but not completely. During those years, occasional attacks took place, usually by isolated raiders. In the intervening years all the significant destruction that was caused has been repaired. However, there is still evidence of what happened in those troubled times and the legacy remains in the form of houses that were rebuilt after the war in a style that is similar to but distinct from the originals. On 20th October 1940, Swindon experienced its first night bombing. An unidentified bomber on a north-south line dropped three bombs, two high-explosive and one incendiary shortly after 22.00 hours. One of the bombs landed in Rosebery Street and destroyed or severely damaged numbers 115 to 120, on the western side of that street. Unfortunately the bomb caused a number of casualties. There were ten confirmed fatalities and an uncertain number of injured persons. After the war was over the destroyed houses were replaced by new ones built to the same basic design but using different materials and along utilitarian lines. This image shows the houses as they are now and, although they will have been modernised in the intervening years, they remain noticeably different from their older neighbours. The bay windows lack the decorative stonework that graced the original houses and, although the current windows are PVCu, as rebuilt they would have been steel casements in place of the original timber sash windows. The historical information above was extracted from a monograph ‘Swindon Air Raids in World War 2’ by K Walter published privately in 1998, a copy of which can be found in Swindon’s Central Library.

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