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19 Barrow Road, 1940. (Cambridgeshire Collection)

19 Barrow Road

History of 19 Barrow Road

Michael Bowyer in Air Raid! pub. 1986 p. 101, describes in detail the bombing of 19 Barrow Road. He reports the words of the Cambridge ARP warden confronted with the aftermath of a HE bomb dropped by a He 111:

The bomb dropped in Barrow Road when we were at dinner. The front door was blown in and as I grabbed my tin hat and went out I wondered what I should find.

I was given the task of visiting each house in The Sector in case of injury and was horrified to see, in a few minutes, a Barrow Road house go up in flames…..the householder was found behind th window curtains, as if he’d been looking out; the bomb had hit the gas main nearby. His wife, in the kitchen, escaped harm.

No 19 Barrow Road had been reduced to rubble by a 500kg HE bomb, the heaviest ever to fall on Cambridge and fortunately still of unusual calibre. No. 17 had been seriously damaged. The large Long Road marshalling yards were probably the intended target.

17 & 19 Barrow Road

 

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