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Jack Parsley describes a substantial air raid shelter built c.1940 at the bottom of a garden in Greville Road by his parents and relatives. The shelter was almost completely sunk into the ground and fitted with seats and children’s bunks. It still survives, having since served as a garden store and wine cellar.
Jack provides interesting background colour to life in those times; from the strong character of his mother as she organises the family, to the men working as air raid wardens and to the disturbance of routines by sirens and bombs. He contrasts the relative safety of Cambridge with London, visible to the south as “a red glow on the clouds” from the fires. This led the children at least to adopt a blasé attitude to bombing risks, once rudely shaken when a bomber attacked Mill Road forcing them to run to the School’s air raid shelter.
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