Vicarage Terrace

Vicarage Terrace (Custom Terrace), Cambridge

History of Vicarage Terrace

1886 ordnance Survey map shows the street as Custom Street with Vicarage Terrace on the south side.

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Vicarage Terrace was hit in a German bombing raid in June 1940. It was the most serious bombing incident so far in the war and the first time that an enemy aircraft had been shot down at night over the UK. This was largely due to the clear conditions as well as accurate use of searchlights to illuminate German bombers for the RAF.

Nos 1-6 Vicarage Terrace were demolished and nos. 7-10 were seriously damaged.  A large crater marked the site on nos. 3 to 5. It was likely that two 50kg HE bombs were used. Many windows in St Matthew’s church were smashed by the blast; the eight foot high wall around the vicarage collapsed. There was serious damage to gas, water and sewage mains.

Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette 18/6/1940

7 NAZI PLAN DOWN – 100 Machines In Raid … and East Coast – ELEVEN CIVILIANS KILLED FOURTEEN INJURED

It is learned authoritatively that …. took part in the raid on the The East Coast during the night, in which … and at least 14 injured. 

It is believed that enemy’s … aerodromes on the East Coast. Damage … slight. 

Seven raiders were brought down … Counties, one in the sea off the East … in the sea off the South-East …. accounted for five of the planes but … almost certain destroyed, and probably brought down by A.A. fire. 

The main damage was done in a town in Cambridgeshire, a salvo of bombs fallng in a street where most of the casualties occurred. 

This is the first time that any German bomber has been shot down over the British Isles during night hours. 

Last night was described as a night in a hundred. It was brilliant, and our fighter airmen would like to think they would be operating always under similar conditions. 

Dead and injured in the row of houses on which bombs fell in a working class district of an East Anglian town [Cambridge] are as follow: 

Killed: Heather Dear (5 months) [no.1], Mr Langley [no.2], Sam Langley (19) [no.2],  Gladys Clarke (11) [no.3], Mr and Mrs T Beresford [no.5], and their son Michael (2) [no.5], Molly Palmer (9) [no.8], and Leonard Palmer (6) [no.8], the latter dying in hospital. 

Injured: Mrs Kate Clarke (42) [no.3] shock,  Charles F F Clarke (43) [no.3] fracture of the leg, Peggy Clarke (19) [no.3] multiple abrasions (all these at the same address); Mrs Kathleen Dear (22) [no.1] mother of the dead baby,  shock: Sidney S. Palmer (54) [no.6] cut head: Mrs Emma Palmer, (51) [no.6], multiple injuries (these two live at the same address: Lilly Itzcovitch (11)[no.?], an evacuee, cut head and arm: Mrs Mabel Watts [no.4], multiple injuries: Mrs Doris Palmer (34) [no.8] injuries to feet: and Mrs Lily Langley (47) [no.2] shock. 

Mrs Dear’s husband is due to join the Army to-morrow. 

The majority of the enemy aircraft brought down were Heinkel IIIs. They crashed in East Anglia and Kent.

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Jack Overhill wrote in his diary for 19th June:

Last night the siren went off about 11.30. About 12.30 I was awakened by a terrific crash. I called the children down into our bedroom. They got in the bed with Jess. I dressed and lay on the couch that is in our bedroom. Then we heard gunfire. The crash turned out to be a bomb. (I heard at the bathing sheds tonight that there were two bombs, as they had discovered two craters on some houses in Vicarage Terrace, killing nine people and injuring a lot more.) The gunfire was from a Spitfire that went up from Duxford and brought down the machine that dropped the bombs. Lots of people say they saw it brought down. I wasn’t one of them. Jess and I went and had a look at the damage done this morning. Nine houses were just a pile of rubble. They were digging for the bodies. The houses in the next street were stripped of their chimney pots and damaged so that the people had to get out of them (I was told this while we were looking on). I heard from my brother Fred that later in the day the parson was there praying over the rubble.

Michael Bowyer writes about the incident from first hand ex[erience in ‘Air Raid’ (1986) p52. He had sheltered with his family in the Brunswick school air raid shelter when someone ran in shouting ‘They’ve got Vicarage Terrace.’ he write:

Recently an interesting aspect of the incident has revealed itself. A young boy living at the ‘Dog and Pheasant‘ close to Vicarage Terrace, has recalled how his family were awaiting the start of Mum’s birthday, 19 June, when the bombs fell… at precisely two minutes to midnight. While the adults did their best at the ghastly scene he ran to Gwydir Street to summon help. Total disbelief greeted him and a refusal, he claimed to make a report of the incident from the word of a mere child. Not so easily thwarted, he telephoned the police from their call box on the side of the Beaconsfield Hall. According to official accounts, Vicarage Terrace was bombed at 00:15. Strange, because the large oak clock on our mantelpiece recorded the event at midnight, and it kept fairly good time.

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Cambridge Mass Observation Diarist:

June 20. Postman brought news that a bomb had been dropped on Cambridge. Busman told us seven people killed in a row of houses down just off East Road. My Uncle who was out on duty as a Special saw one German plane shot down in flames. Many villagers saw it also. The newspaperman reports it came at Balsham cross-roads. My aunt to Cambridge afternoon to see show my friend got on who lives alone near where the bomb dropped. She found her white and shaken and dreading another raid. Sent off another parcel.

June 21. A cousin arrived from Balsham to tell us how she had seen the German plane caught in the searchlights, had seen the tracer bullets set it alight and then had seen it come down a couple of fields from her house. She also saw one of the crew jump in his parachute. To Working Party in Village Hall afternoon. Of course the raid was the topic of conversations. It seemed everybody threw caution to the winds and went out to watch the fight. Even Red Cross workers, who it seems to me, should have known better had their heads out of windows, watching. In the evening to First Aid Class practising tourniquets in the light of the raid on Cambridge when one man had both legs blown off.

[Extract recorded 17th September 2019 by Simon King at the Mass Observation Archives held at The Keep, University of Sussex, Falmer, with kind permission of Kirsty Pattrick, Special Collections Archivist]

In 2024 DP sent a note to say that her grandad, Charles Utteridge, a builder who lived at 101 Russell Street, was a fireman and had pulled a young girl out of the rubble in Vicarage Terrace.

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For more information:

http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/history-stories/bombing-of-vicarage-terrace-in-ww2/

http://cambridgehistorian.blogspot.com/2012/06/bombing-of-vicarage-terrace_7702.html

The Secret History of the Blitz, Joshua Levine 2015

Memories of Vicarage Terrace

The houses no. 1-8 approx are missing in this 1950 map.

This would become the site of the Cherry Trees Day Centre.