Tag: Broomfield Avenue

Palmers Green to New Southgate WWII Heritage Trail

As part of the Enfield at War Project we have been producing war walks for Edmonton, Enfield and Southgate. The Enfield Town First World War Heritage Trail is already available and now the next one has just come back from the printer.  The Palmers Green to New Southgate WWII Heritage Trail is an easy walk that takes between 1½ and 2½ hours.  It starts at Princes Avenue  the site of the highest number of deaths in a single incident in World War Two and takes you through Palmers Green to Broomfield Park,  Waterfall Road, Arnos Park, Bowes road ending up at the Grove Road Open Space in New Southgate.  The leaflets are available from Enfield Local Studies Library & Archive, First Floor Thomas Hardy House, 39 London Road, EN2 6DS and will be distributed to all Enfield libraries. The map can also be downloaded from the Enfield Council website: http://www.enfield.gov.uk/info/1062/local_studies/3813/second_world_war_palmers_green_heritage_walk . WWII walks for Enfield and Edmonton will be available soon.

Also on the Enfield at War website are articles from local newspapers published during the First World War: http://www.enfield.gov.uk/info/200046/libraries/3165/historic_newspaper_reports_from_world_war_one_1914_-_1918 . They are a mixture of the serious and the silly reflecting the attitudes and opinions of people at the time.

Bomb Damage during Second World War

Since we acquired new scanners staff and volunteers at Enfield Local Studies Archive have been digitising old negatives. Some of them we had  already taken prints from but others haven’t been seen since they were taken. Thanks to advances in technology the quality of the images we are creating is much higher than previously.  The most recent photos scanned from the old negatives show the terrible devastation of the bombing during the Second World War. Even those incidents described as ‘minor bombing’ in the ARP log books such as the one in Connop Road on 21st Match 1944 caused a huge crater and destroyed houses as well as causing injury to residents.

On 14th April 1944 bombs fell on Aldermans Hill and Broomfield Avenue. 40 houses and 25 shops with flats above were damaged. 3 people were killed and 1 seriously injured.

The Mapleton Road bomb was a V2 (described in the ARP reports as a ‘long range rocket’. It caused extensive damage to electricity and phone cables. People were trapped in the wreckage of their houses. Search dogs had to be deployed.

The last V2 to fall in the area landed on the sewage farm in Montague Road, Edmonton. One person was killed. Eleven days later the war in Europe was over.