EAW010657 ENGLAND (1947). Bristol Filton Airport under construction, Catbrain, from the west, 1947

Recorded approx location of a 2ndWW LAA (Bofors) gun position, designation 6.

Location of a 2ndWW Bofors Gun Tower.

Gap in the hedge shows the location of a 2ndWW Bofors Gun Tower.

2ndWW Bofors Gun Tower.

2ndWW Bofors Gun Tower.

2ndWW Bofors Gun Tower.

Location of a 2ndWW Bofors Gun Tower.

Approximate site of Bristol Parkway station

Bushes surrounding the pond where I saw my first moorhens.

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St Michael and All Angels Church, Parish Church of Stoke Gifford where I was a choir boy for some years in the late 1940's

Winterbourne Church where I was confirmed by The Bishop of Bristol in 1950

Together with my father and hundreds of others I was stood near this point and watched Bill Pegg fly the Brabazon on its maiden flight. There were many other people much nearer to the flight path than we were.

My father worked near this point.

Almost unbelievably this was a petrol filling station on the A38 trunk road. In later years when I had my own car and regularly bought my fuel there. Inevitably it was finally destroyed when a Vulcan bomber was overshooting the runway and FULL throttle was applied to the 4 Bristol Olympus engines for it to escape. Miraculously I don't recall there being any fatalities on the ground. My father was working in the BAC in line with its flight path. Together with other witnesses he was transfixed waiting for his end but he and they escaped.

Brickyard Hill

The Filton Works

The Rodney Works

The Patchway Shadow Factory in which my father worked from mid 30's until retirement in 1964.

The tiny hamlet of Little Stoke

RAF Filton

Frenchay Hospital

We knew this as 'The mile straight' Walking it seemed a lot longer than that. In actual fact it was quite a lot less than that.

Filton Junction Railway Station

The school in Stoke Gifford

Hatchet Lane. My brother sued to go to school in Stoke Gifford and attended there about twice in 1940. However it was very much subject to aerial strafing and our mother refused to allow him to attend. This was brought to the attention of the authorities and a school inspector was despatched on his fastest bike to admonish our mother. She was not to be moved from her stance. The inspector (name withheld) duly rode off to test the water. His survey unfortunately coincided with one such attack and he finished in the ditch alongside the road. My brother never went to that school again.

We knew this as the 'white road'. All the white concrete roads around the area were blacked over to make the area less conspicuous from the air. But not the white road!

There was and still is a fenced off electricity building disguised as an ordinary shed. It is where most of us kids used to scale the fencing and play cops and robbers etc.

I was no more sensible than most children. Do not play with matches! I am the guilty one who set the field on fire. Luckily there were more sensible people available to save the situation. I regret my actions.

I believe these were called 'Savage's Wood' a favourite haunt of a lot of us kids during our ramblings in those early days of freedom.

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The house in Rossall Avenue to which the family returned in 1945. My sister Shirley had recently died before our return after the war.

I was almost age 3 when my family was bombed out in September 1940 from our home in Kingsway, Little Stoke. The bomb that nearly 'got us' was the last in a stick aimed by some German in the raid on the Bristol Aeroplane Works. The works are seen spread out in large factory areas on the west side of the GWR railway complex. Where the hedge intersects with the houses is where our father had dug our air raid shelter. It was in line with the usual stream that followed the course of hedgerows and my father ingeniously diverted the stream to the lower land towards the railway line. He could not have foretold that his actions would save all the lives of all his family to come to after the raid. The bomb came to soft earth and the blast removed the top of his shelter and injured my mother. But she and her three children survived although she suffered blast injury which she stoically bore for the rest of her life of 88 years.