Lurking under a substantial road bridge in north-east London
lies a remnant of the second world war – a public air-raid
shelter that probably housed about a thousand people during
bombing raids. The area, mainly of semi-detached houses with
decent sized gardens would normally have been expected to have
Anderson Shelters in their back gardens, so why was such a large
public shelter built here? As it happens the area is the side of
a hill, and you can’t easily build shelters in sloping back
gardens — and they would have flooded during rain anyway — so a
communal shelter was provided. There was already a major road
bridge on the site, and it would appear that they took advantage
of that to provide the roof, then built substantial walls
underneath to create large dormitories that could be used by the
public. There seems to have been two doors on either side of the
shelter, with two smaller escape doors at the lowest part of the
shelter. Another larger door in a subway under the road was
probably the main entrance