Ashburnham Road (adjoining Stadium Street) and Ashburnham Mansions

The Chelsea Chamber of Commerce Handbook for 1928 explained that ‘From Tadema Road to Lots Road, S.W.10, Ashburnham Road, commemorates Ashburnham House, built in the middle of the 18th century by Dr. Benhamin Hoadley an eminent physician.

Second World War

There were two serious incidents causing loss of life and severe damage to buildings in this road during the Blitz of the Second World War.

On Wednesday the 9th of October 1940 a high explosive bomb, obviously targeted for the Lots Road Power station, struck the grocers and off-licence shop at ‘Ideal Stores’ 21 Ashburnham Road and the blast caused severe casualties. Six people died.

The bomb also demolished the adjoining houses, numbers 37, 39 and 41 in Stadium Street.

The rescue of those still alive trapped in the debris was made more harrowing as a fierce fire broke out.

Irene Haslewood said the bomb which dropped on Stadium Street had been a 2,000 lb munition and had been a really good shot for the Lots Road Power Station but not quite good enough.

Instead it annihilated a row of very modest little houses and the area’s corner shop run by Albert and Kitty McKay.

Air raid incidents often generated the appalling dilemma of rescuing trapped victims and/or putting out the fire. What should have been the priority?

The NFS and AFS (National Fire Service and Auxiliary Fire Service) had no choice but to drench the site as they did with this entire neighbourhood because of the closely packed residential terraced housing.

Gallons of water poured from the pumps and unfortunately drowned a man trapped in one of the basements. It was a common but unavoidable tragedy.

As Irene and her salvage squad reflected, if he had not died from drowning, he would almost certainly have been burnt to death.

To have to think that drowning may have been a little more merciful than burning was not something his relatives deserved as any kind of consolation or even consideration.

Irene’s team found the salvage work filthy and troubling for a number of reasons.

It was extremely dirty work because everything was sodden and sopping wet from the water and coal black from the fire.

And what had been a little grocery shop was now a pile of charred rubble mixed with literally hundreds of tins of food.

There was also still at least one body that needed to be dug out.

A thunderstorm broke out over their heads and combined with the wailing air-raid sirens to produce an uncanny near nightmarish effect.

A large number of the grocery shop’s tins had been blown open or were only slightly damaged.

The contents were entirely edible and at a time of rationing rather tempting and enticing.

There was also an understandable moral panic and outrage about looting.

Civilian workers in the ARP services were particularly vulnerable to accusation and rumour as well as extremely sensitive to the agony and loss suffered by bombed out victims whom they cared for when they were so distraught and traumatised.

The penalties for looting being handed out by Magistrates’ Courts had been particularly harsh and deterrent setting.

In one case somebody had to serve three months hard labour for helping themselves to three old pence worth of chocolate.

Irene and her colleagues could not help thinking about the waste of all these heaps of perfectly good food tins piled high in the gutter which would soon be disposed of as refuse.

Three large chests of tea could have been saved and distributed, but had to be left out in the open street with their lids torn off and the thunder rain pouring into them and ruining the precious tea.

This was such a valuable commodity and treasured beverage when supplies from around the world were being sunk by U-Boat attacks on merchant shipping from Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and India.

Some of the men asked if they could ‘waste not want not’, but were firmly refused permission on account of the strict looting laws.

The only object Irene could take away with her from the Stadium Street and Ashburnham Road incident was a piece of bomb-casing which had been salvaged from deep inside the huge crater.

It was about an inch and a half thick and amazingly heavy.

When books have been written about the history of Chelsea so much attention is given to celebrity and famous people.

But the social existence and importance of the corner shop needs emphasis and recognition and this is what German bombing of this part of Chelsea wiped out in October 1940.

Mr and Mrs McKay were running a vital public service for the World’s End.

This is where people in the surrounding streets would come to buy their food, candles, paraffin for heaters, and booze. It tried to be open all hours. And in World War Two it would be the place which would administer the allocation of rationing.

This is the shop in 1929 which advertised for a strong lad of around 15 ‘willing to make himself generally useful’ to run errands, receive supplies, restock the shelves, serve when the grocer and his wife were having their lunch or tea, and make deliveries on the shop’s bicycle.

This is the shop which in 1935 would happily run the risk of being fined for staying open after licensing hours (9 p.m) to sell bread and pickles, and pay the fine of 15 shillings (75 pence in new currency) for doing so.

It was also the shop where 68 year old Eliza Jane Westall of 4 Ashburnham Road would utter her last words ‘Oh dear’ one Saturday afternoon in 1927 and breathe her last after going out to do some shopping.

Her sister-in-law said Miss Westall had worked all her life as a domestic cook, and had been ‘a healthy woman of sober habits’ but had had some kidney trouble.

The last person she had spoken to had been the grocer’s assistant Frank Herbert Wall.

The Ideal Stores corner shop was one of a square of four corner shops planned for the crossroads between Ashburham Road and Stadium Street when this area was developed towards the end of the 19th century.

Up to the present time of writing, I have been unable to find any photographs of its existence.

However, the London Picture Archive of the City of London Metropolitan Archives does have a collection of black and white photographs taken in 1972 of the remaining three shops and the single storey ‘prefab’ which was constructed immediately after the war on the bomb site to provide emergency housing.

I think these humble, modest and seemingly innocuous aspects of the social life of a community are as important as Kings, Prime Ministers and the rich and all the famous associated glamour giving Chelsea its Bohemian, literary and artistic elan.

When you are next down this part of Chelsea and passing this corner of Ashburnham Road and Stadium Street do say a prayer and tip your hat to Mr and Mrs McKay who were running the Ideal Stores Corner Shop when they were rudely and fatally interrupted by a two thousand pounder meant for the Lots Road Power Station, but missing the intended target by about 50 yards and, of course, take a moment to remember the victims killed in the houses in Stadium Street.

A photograph of ‘Ideal Stores’ in Ashburnham Road and the adjoining terraced houses in Stadium Street was taken by an overflying aeroplane in 1921 and towards the left the quadrangle of corner shops can be seen with the awning of the grocer’s clearly visible. The Britain From Above online resource enables visitors to zoom in for higher resolution. The aerial perspective also demonstrates how close the German bomber was to hitting the Luftwaffe’s target- the four funnelled Lots Road Power Station- only yards and two streets away to the south of the detonation.

The rescue and salvage operation at Ashburnham Road and Stadium Street Wednesday 9th October 1940

Husband and wife Albert and Elizabeth (known as Kitty) McKay in number 21 Ashburnham Road were killed. Albert was 47 years old and a grocer’s manager. His body was not found and dug out of the wreckage of their home until 7 a.m. on the Friday afterwards. The body of his 42 year old wife Kitty was extracted three hours later.

In the adjacent houses in Stadium Street, three members of the Newman family- Millicent Violet, aged 47, and her two daughters, 22 year old Violet Hilda and 17 year old Mabel Phyllis, would be trapped as the blast tore through number 41.

Another casualty was 24 year old Home Guard Frederick Walter Patmore who was staying in the house.

Millicent Newman was one of the first to be pulled alive out of the debris and taken to St Stephen’s Hospital. Freddie Patmore of the Home Guard visiting from his home in Fulham was alive though seriously injured.

But Mrs Newman’s eldest daughter Violet who worked as a clerk in the Ministry of Labour was killed by the falling masonry. Rescuers reached her at 2.45 in the early hours of Thursday morning, and could find no pulse.

They also found the body of her younger sister Mabel five minutes later. Mabel had worked as a clerk in the Home Office.

Their father John had the appalling task of identifying his two daughters at the Dovehouse Street mortuary on the following Saturday only hours after being by his wife’s bedside at St Stephen’s when she succumbed to her injuries.

Freddie Patmore died at St Stephen’s on 16th October unable to recover from the injuries and burns he suffered in the bomb blast and subsequent fire.

Later Blitz incidents in 1940

On 14th October 1940 an incendiary bomb dropped on the roof of St John’s Church in Ashburnham Road caused a fire which gutted the church.

The church occupied a triangular site between Tadema and Ashburnham Roads and was built in 1875 and often described as being situated in Ashburnham Rd. See: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol12/pp250-258 (contains a reproduction of a photograph of the front of the church)

The Victorian church and vicarage for St John’s in the World’s End Chelsea traversing Ashburnham and Tadema Road and destroyed through enemy action on 14th and 17th October 1940. Image public domain.

Three days later on 17th October an unexploded delayed action bomb fell on the vicarage of St John’s Church. This detonated five hours after hitting the building. There were no casualties.

Andrew Butler was employed by the London County Council to examine and report on bomb damage in Chelsea. He wrote up his experiences of working in the Borough during 1941 in the book Recording Ruin which was published in 1942. He recalled examining the ruins of St John’s Church:

‘…then came to a church with its roof blown off. It was an ugly building but quite picturesque as a ruin, all red and scorched insided. Today’s black sky helped it to look a little like one of Piper’s modern paintings of fire and desolation.

  After that I spent an exhausting hour writing up the rectory. It was tremendously smashed, just as if Hitler had wanted to teach it to be so big and inconvenient. I walked in by a large hole, then upstairs. But the top landing was wobbling, so I had to crawl quite flat to distribute my weight over the surviving floor joists. The whole roof was slipping off one side. That meant worming my way behind the wall of the attic along a tunnel-like space about three feet high. It was nearly quite dark and incredibly dirty. Antique bell-wires twitched me and entangled themselves in my torch. There was not enough room to turn around. So I went on, found another hole and came out under the broken lavatory basin of a bathroom. An old green sponge-bag was dangling from it. I thought, as I sat up breathlessly, that it was strange to be there, looking like that, in this mess in a back street in Chelsea. It was like one morning in 1915, when I sat huddled in a gap near the Crater at Hooge, aiming guns with a telescope. Just for a moment I thought how strange to be there, looking like that, between two armies and with a dead german’s elbow beside me. Then it was mud. Now it’s dust. Then I had guns to shoot back with. Now I haven’t.’

It seems incendiary bombs were responsible for destroying the church apart from the tower and later in October 1940 the vicarage was wrecked when struck by an unexploded bomb. The church tower was demlished in 1949 and the site left derelict for twenty years. It is currently the site for a block of flats and petrol station.

On 17th October 1940 a high explosive bomb hit the east side of Ashburnham Mansions with severe damage to the building but miraculously no casualties.

All the residents were in shelters at the time. The air raid straddling the 17th and 18th October had lasted 11 hours 56 minutes.

The bomb fell directly on number 20 and cut the block almost in half with the levelling of the central wing all the way to the ground. The debris blocked Ashburnham Road.

A small high explosive bomb fell in front of the buildings damaging railings and the road itself.

Hundreds of doors and windows were blown in and out of their fittings. Another paradox is that number 54 Ashburnham Mansions completely escaped any damage at all. It was the only one to do so.

The deaths in 41 Stadium Street

Millicent Newman Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Violet Hilda Newman Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Mabel Phyllis Newman Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Frederick Walter Patmore Commonwealth War Graves Commission

The deaths at 21 Ashburnham Road

Albert Edward McKay Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Kate Elizabeth (Kitty) McKay Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Images in slideshow at top of posting

1. Ashburnham Mansions in Ashburnham Road. Google Street view 2023

2. Junction of Ashburnham Road and Stadium Street. Google Street view 2023

3. Site of number 21 Ashburnham Road now replaced with modern housing block. Tim Crook June 2022

4. Site of numbers 37 to 41 Stadium Street destroyed in the Blitz of 1940, now replaced with block of modern apartments. Tim Crook June 2022

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Special thanks to Karen White and Chris Pain whose families lived in Chelsea during World War Two and Malachy John McCauley, also brought up in Chelsea, who have very kindly encouraged and assisted my research. Special thanks to Marja Giejgo for editorial assistance. Research and archive facilities from Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council library services, The Imperial War Museum and National Archives at Kew.

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