Liverpool Blitz
T Roger S Wilson introduces a first-hand account of the destruction of Hunter Street Meeting House in Liverpool in the ‘May Blitz’ of 1941
The night that the old Liverpool Meeting House was blitzed Gordon Henderson was a young member of Liverpool Meeting.
The old Hunter Street Meeting House, which dated from 1791, had become surrounded by run-down property. Some years earlier Liverpool Council had indicated that they intended to acquire the Meeting house by compulsory purchase and clear the area. Friends negotiated with the council, and by 1941 a new Meeting house was almost complete on the other side of Hunter Street. About 100 yards away, at 97 Islington, there was another Quaker building called the Institute. This was used for adult education and for relief work during the war. Rebecca Castree had been for many years the caretaker of the ‘old’ Meeting house.
Liverpool suffered sixty-eight major air raids during world war two. On one single night, 3 May 1941, fourteen ambulance drivers were killed in the city, and it is estimated that in total 850 people died in Liverpool and Bootle that night. Many more were injured. The building, though large and solid, was badly damaged that night by the delayed-action bomb. What remained was never used again, and was demolished to make way for the five-story blocks of post-war flats named after councillor Jack Braddock and his wife Bessie, who was MP for Liverpool Exchange from 1945 to 1970. Gordon Henderson was present in Liverpool on 3 May and had a very narrow escape that night. We are fortunate that he survived and that he also recorded his experience:
I arrived at the Institute at 8.30 pm and then went down to the New Meeting House and across to the Old (Hunter Street). I was talking to Mrs Castree when the Alert went at about 9.20pm. We then went around the Old Meeting House and soon afterwards guns fired and we decided that the cellar was the best place to be. After a while, some one hour, I got fed up and went to look around the town, which was very dark with lots of gunfire and bombs dropping. Mrs Castree and I decided that we were in for a long night’s bombing. After some tea we talked for a while and she went back to the cellar, and at that moment a small bomb dropped in the back of a house in Hunter Street. Nobody was hurt but about fifteen people came out and we sent them to a shelter. At this time a number of fires had started and the people in the tenements were getting into a state of panic. A house at the rear of Rushworth and Draper’s was hit, and I had to help a man who only had a shirt on, to get more clothes. After that I went on to Lime Street and it looked as if the whole town was on fire. The library in William Brown Street was hit and a large fire started there. At that time [it] seemed to get very close, so we looked around the New Meeting House. All was OK, and I then went back to the cellar with Mrs Castree. While we were talking, a great thud shook the whole building and we remarked “That was near”. We both went to see what had happened and found a hole in the roof and a large hole in the floor in the passageway with the iron umbrella stand at the bottom of it. We could do nothing so went back to the cellar. Things quietened now and soon afterwards the all-clear went. Mrs Castree went to her house and I went up to the Institute for my cycle to go home. It was now light. I left at 6am to go home to Litherland and was unable to go direct. I went past Lewis’s [that was]all on fire and then down Bold Street, with fires in a number of shops. A large number of streets were blocked but I made my way along Scotland Road (and) Stanley Road to Bootle with fires all the way. I arrived home about 7am. I had my breakfast, found all OK, cleaned myself up and, as it was Sunday 4th May, I decided to go back for Meeting for Worship and see how things were. I arrived at Hunter Street at 10.45am and saw a notice saying “Unexploded Bomb”. I then went to look at same and damage done and then went to the Institute for Meeting and, just as I was going into the Institute, the Meeting House was blown up. The date May 3rd Saturday was my birthday, a nice present.
