How war altered the face of our capital forever

29 March 2010

After the Great Fire of London in 1666 the other single event which, more than any other, has made our capital city what it is today is World War II.

There is evidence of this to be glimpsed everywhere. How many times do you walk down a street of period houses to find a modern property in the middle sticking out as conspicuously as a bad tooth?

In some ways the Luftwaffe did us a favour as London in the 1930s was still a maze of Victorian back-to-back houses with no outside WCs. This was particularly the case in the East End.

Large-scale slum clearance after the war was easy - many areas were already so badly bomb-damaged that the only sensible option was to start again.

Interestingly, London’s posher enclaves also did their bit to aid the war effort. In particular, the face of many of the capital’s finer residential squares changed.

In 1941 the government decreed that ornamental railings were to be removed and melted down for manufacturing armaments.

This had the effect of opening up many garden squares that had previously only been open to local residents.

Sadly, this is no longer the case and entry to most squares is again by key only, unless you fancy vaulting the fence as Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts did in the film Notting Hill.

Residents were not allowed to shelter in underground stations unless they bought a ticket to travel

During the war St James’s Square was dug over and became a huge vegetable plot tended by the owners of overlooking houses.

Meanwhile, Belgrave Square in the heart of Belgravia became a tank park and in south Kensington, Hereford Square was turned into a baseball diamond for homesick American GIs.

Stranger still is that Bayswater’s elegant Cleveland Square was used as a site for mooring barrage balloons that were then floated above London’s rooftops during air raids.

Ironically, the eastern side of Cleveland Square is now almost entirely taken up by an ugly 1950s block of flats that was built as a result of damage caused by an air raid in 1942.

In the early 1940s the Georgian charm of Soho Square and Manchester Square was disturbed as both were turned into underground air raid shelters.

Interestingly, at the start of the Blitz London’s residents weren’t allowed to shelter in any of the underground railway stations unless they bought a ticket to travel - amazing but true.

But the war also influenced our capital in a number of more subtle ways. At the site of Clapham South underground station a shelter still exists (pictured).

On June 22 1948 the Empire Windrush freighter brought the first West Indian immigrants to Britain and the authorities housed the majority of them in the aforementioned shelter.

As a result, nearby Brixton became home to this new population and today is one of London’s most colourful and vibrant multicultural districts.

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