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This story was submitted to the People’s War Site by Three Counties Action, on behalf of Shirley Hobbs, and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

The House with the Cross

At the beginning of World War II I lived in a terraced house in central Luton, near to the Vauxhall Motor Factory and the small River Lea. After bombing raids aimed at Vauxhall, our little house was deemed to be ‘condemned’ by the local authority. Mum explained to me (aged four) that we should not be living there as it was unsafe, the foundations were not secure! There was no other accommodation available so we had to stay. The walls were in danger of falling outwards, so it was decided to put a steel girder through the house from front to back, to keep them upright. I can remember the diagonal steel cross on the front wall facing the street. The centre of the cross was level with the bedroom floor. I cannot remember the bar (‘rod’) going up through the rooms, so I presume it was behind furniture. I was only five years old when we moved to another house, but, would you believe it, more tenants were placed there when we moved out! After the war the area was demolished and is now occupied by Luton University Campus. Even the street no longer exists, but I know exactly the site of my ‘House with the Cross’. (Coincidentally, it is where the University Chaplaincy now stands).

“Under the Table You Must Go�

We moved across town to a semi-detached house in 1943, a few days after my fifth birthday. At our previous home we had an Anderson air-raid shelter in the garden, but now we had become ‘posh’ and had a Morrison shelter in the front room. This was a large table-shaped structure with a heavy steel top, four legs and mesh sides. It filled the room, and my Mother placed a large heavy table cloth over it during the day. In my innocence, I believed that shelter to be completely safe during air raids. My older brother and I used to sleep under there each night, and Mum used to bring my baby brother from his cot upstairs when the warning siren sounded. My Dad was either on night duty with the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Guard or working at Vauxhall, which was just as well, as there was not room for five people in the shelter together. During daylight, where ever I was when the warning sounded, I always ran home to our front room, where I believed I would be safe forever. I recall the space in the room after the war when our trusted friend, the Morrison shelter, was taken away. Mum and Dad had to acquire some new furniture!

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