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ONLINE MUSEUM: QE bombed - 1941
 | When I was at the school in the 1950s, I sometimes wondered why some of the brickwork of this corner of the school looked newer than the rest. This picture from the Barnet Press of 3th January 1942 (the year I was born) answers the mystery. It refers to the previous year. The cutting was kindly sent in by Philip Ward, who was attending the school at the time. Unfortunately, the caption under the pic was not legible once the image had been processed for the Web, so I cut it out. It read: "Nazi night raiders were busy in the early part of the year (1941), and bombs caused considerable damage and some loss of life. Above: damage at Queen Elizabeth's School for Boys, Barnet." Philip explains that the damage was to the Chemistry Lab and the Woodwork Shop, and was caused by one of two bombs. The other bomb demolished the Refectory (just out of sight to the right). | |
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On the right are a couple of prints from Philip's own negatives of that event. The top picture was taken from the upper corridor, a day or two after the bombing, looking north across the ruined refectory to the Gun Field. (Note the Rugby posts). The two bombs that hit the school were from a 'stick' of eight. Philip knows that because he lived in Byng Road at the time, and counted them. A 3-foot cube of the school's brickwork went through the roof of his house. The stick was dropped from south to north and the last bomb fell two fields over from the end of Byng Road. The last two houses in Byng Road are just visible behind the trees in the top right corner of the lower picture. This shows the crater of the last bomb and the two friends are John Wells(L) and, Philip thinks, Norman Hughes. Even in a bomb crater, they are both correctly dressed in the uniform of grey flannel suits, caps and ties. |  | |
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