World War II
I was chatting with my friend Irene over the Christmas break and she was telling me about this area during the War. She was only seven when the war broke out and was thirteen when it ended so she remembers quite a bit about it.
 Not long after the War started she and her brothers and sisters were all evacuated to the country for safety, but their mum missed them so she went and fetched them all back home again. They lived near Daisy Mill (the big Repo TV place) on Stockport Road not far from what is now Longsight Police Station. Daisy Mill was used during the War by the Army Pay Corp and because it was an Army base constant attempts were made by the Germans to bomb it. It was during one of those raids that a bomb landed in MacKenzie Street, just off Northmoor Road, and flattened two terraced houses. That is why when you walk along MacKenzie Street today there are two houses that are completely different to all the rest.
 There was a prisoner of war camp (POW Camp) just behind Daisy Mill and Irene can remember standing at the side of the road watching the prisoners being marched out and down into Manchester to be put on trains to take them to other camps. There was also a POW Camp where Bellevue Speedway is today.
 Where Longsight Police Station is today was a big coal yard with a high wall around it. Coal, along with just about everything else, was rationed during the war and people never had enough. Irene and her brothers and sisters used to take a big Silver Cross pram out at night and go down to the coal yard. Some would climb over into the yard and some would remain with the pram. Those in the yard would throw coal over the wall and the rest would load it into the pram. Lots of people used to steal coal from the yard.
 One night they went to liberate another pram load of coal, but just as they were arriving at the yard the Police launched a raid as they had heard that people were going to be stealing coal that night. Irene and her brothers and sisters ran away as fast as they could. She and one of her sisters had the pram and ran away from their house towards Kirkmanshulme Lane. Back then Longsight Station was there, near to the entrance to the Asda car park. Irene and her sister had the brilliant idea of trying to steal some coal from the station. There were huge piles of coal there for the steam trains. They managed to sneak past the nightwatchman and stole a pram load of best anthracite. This was the best coal there was and during the War it was kept for the trains. When they got home they realised that the coal was in big lumps, far too large for the fireplace in their house. Irene and her brothers and sisters spent the next week sitting out in the yard every evening smashing the coal up into smaller pieces with hammers.
 Irene also recalled that one day she was taken ill and needed emergency surgery on her neck. The ambulance came to collect her and her mother to take her to the hospital. She tells me she was terrified, not about the operation but because they had to drive through Deansgate in the middle of Manchester to reach the hospital and there was a major air raid taking place at the time. She said you could hear the bombs falling all round them and that the ambulance was rocking and shaking with the shock waves from the explosions.
There must be loads of people living around here who can still remember what it was like to be here during the war.
Check out the BBC World War II People’s War web site. Also Imperial War Museum North. Here is a web site about the Manchester blitz.
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WW2 and Gatling Ave - Long Shot! - Aidan O'Rourke Photo Portfolio Website Forums said,
April 9, 2007 @ 12:01 pm
[…] “Stray bombs” are a euphemism. From a great deal of reading and, over the years, talking to RAF, USAAF and Luftwaffe aircrew it is clear that even the most refined 1940s bombsights were never more than 60% accurate. The bigger the target, the bigger the chance of doing real damage but, if you want to understand just how hard it is to hit and destroy a small, defined and very specific target read the histories of the Amiens raid, the Schwienfurt raids or raids on specific bridges. Consider how the Stockport viaduct was a prime strategic target and how it survived. When you are above 5,000 feet travelling at over 200 mph with variable wind between you and the target and all you have is 1940s technology plus Mk1 eyeball to find and lock onto your target which is shrouded in darkness, with flak bursting around you and cloud moving across your line of sight, “stray bombs” are a certainty and they destroy or damage what they hit. There are, of course, many examples of crews totally missing targets (the bombing of Dublin, mistaken for Liverpool is a major example) and crews under attack, or having missed the target and turning for home, would just get rid of their bombs to help increase aircraft performance - often reporting they had hit their target (this happened in all air forces) but, if in 1939-1945 you lived within 3 miles of any target in Europe subjected to high level bombing, you stood a chance of getting hit due to poor target acquisition, misidentification or unsteady approach to target (a one minute straight and level approach at 20,000 ft was the norm if you wanted to stand a chance of hitting what you were supposed to and, I’m told, that minute seemed a lifetime). My wife’s mother lived in Farrant Rd as a teenager throughout the war and that area of Longsight was hit from time to time, especially between winter 1940 and the summer of 1942, though she doesn’t recall any major incidents. She does recall seeing Luftwaffe aircraft machine gunning Birchfields Rd and Moseley Rd whilst she was en route to school at The Hollies. I wonder why Margaret’s Blog » World War II (para 2) recalls one particular incident but not what would have been a greater local disaster just a few hundred yards further south. Talking as I was of misidentification, both Crowcroft Park and Gatling Avenue are in Levenshulme and, to get back to the subject, it is a little strange that, were there to be truth in the story of whole terraces being demolished, neither David Boardman’s Longsight pages nor George Nixon’s Levenshulme pages have any memories of what would have been a major local incident. […]
htc p 3600 said,
May 8, 2007 @ 3:42 pm
htc p 3600…
Margaret’s Blog » World War II…