The Blitz
- Restoration to Regency
- The Era of Empire and War
- The Blitz
- Swinging London
- A Cultural Shift
- The Quiet Revolution
War Damage at Montagu House, 1941
Photo: Courtesy of Greater London Council
After a year’s so-called ‘phoney war’, the Blitz began on 7th September 1940 (‘Black Saturday’). Bombs first fell on Woolwich Arsenal, then on the Victoria and Albert, East India and Surrey Commercial Docks, setting them ablaze, along with whole dockland communities. Over 1,400 incendiary canisters fell on dockland in the second week of September, and almost a thousand tons of high explosive. On 8th December the Luftwaffe dropped over 3,000 incendiary bombs - eight times more than in the first day of the Blitz.
The severest bombing raid of the whole Blitz came on 10th May 1941, creating fires from Romford to Hammersmith. More civilians were killed than on any other single raid in Britain: 1,400. Some of these casualties were in Portman, Bryanston, and Montagu Squares. Reggie Cave was a young architect employed by the War Damage Commission, and remembers the impact the Luftwaffe made: ‘The Mostyn Hotel in Portman Square was severely damaged, and what sticks in my mind was looking up at the hotel and being able to see directly into the bedrooms because the external wall of the building had been blown away, leaving the interior exposed. Some suitcases were never claimed, I suppose their owners had been obliterated by the blast. It’s certainly true that the war destroyed whole areas of London, and the Portman Estate suffered extensive bomb damage.’
Altogether, 20,000 died and another 25,000 were hurt during the Blitz. Morale generally remained high - despite resentment of inept officialdom - the crisis brought Londoners, traditionally deeply divided by class and district, closer together. ‘It is not the walls that make the city, but the people who live within them,’ George VI told London in 1940. ‘The walls of London may be battered, but the spirit of the Londoner stands resolute and undismayed.’
Killing over 20,000 civilians, the Blitz destroyed or damaged over 3.5 million homes in metropolitan London.
London’s wartime, as seen by some historians, was characterised less by death and social breakdown than by destruction of property. Within the city itself 225 acres - about a third of its area - were devastated; this was little more than half the acreage that had been destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. But the damage covered a far wider area, and the total reconstruction required was greater than after the Fire.
The Estate suffered extensive bomb damage. In addition to the destruction of Montagu House in Portman Square, a cluster of incendiary bombs bisected Bryanston Square early in the war, and shattered its architectural symmetry forever.
The war rendered London a less rooted place. Land tenure remained unaltered but the bonds tying owners and tenants to their buildings did change. It dynamited some of the stuffiness out of the capital’s traditional cultural life.
With thanks to Conrad Keating