Shropshire Star Tuesday, December 22, 2015
22
NOSTALGIA
Brilliant The night Hitler’s bomb rocked our village
breaks
on your
doorstep
Children in the Harmer Hill bomb crater
STARTS
SATURDAY,
JANUARY 2
DON’T
MISS OUT!
Provided by
A photo we used in Pictures From The
Past the other day went down a bomb with
Colin Downward of Harmer Hill.
Because Mr Downward was able to confirm our suspicion that it shows children
sitting in a Shropshire bomb crater during
the war. And what’s more, he was one of
those children.
“It’s at Harmer Hill, and was in about
1942,” he said.
“There was a men’s social club at the top
of Chapel Bank and it was behind there.
The people on the photo are Bob Lloyd,
who is the one at the back standing up in
a dark jacket, and then on the right the
girl is Kathleen Wildblood, who lived in the
Chapel House. The little one on the left sitting down is Frankie Pinnock, and the one
on the right is me, Colin Downward. We
were all from Harmer Hill.
“I’m 82 now. I must have been about
eight or nine at the time. A lot of German
planes in the old days didn’t know where
they were and they used to drop their big
bombs and go home. I lived at Redcroft
in Harmer Hill and it happened in the
evening. My dad was an ex-sergeant in the
1914-18 war in the Cheshire Regiment. He
was a bit of a hardened man.
“We heard it coming down and my mum
started to panic. She said: ‘Bombs, bombs,
Joe!’ He said: ‘What do you want me to do
– go out and catch it?’
“It went boom. You heard the whistle
and the bang. We had just had our tea. Our
house was about 300 or 400 yards away. My
dad had wanted to be in the 39-45 war but
was too old. He was one of the ARP (Air
Raid Precautions) wardens and worked out
at Shawbury as an accountant for the Air
Ministry.
“I don’t know who took the photograph,
it would have been somebody in the village.
Somebody told me years later there was a
photograph, and years later somebody gave
me this photograph.
“I can’t tell you when we went to see the
crater. We might have had to go to school
the following day. It was quite deep.” The
crater was filled in long ago, he said. Asked
to pinpoint the site, Mr Downward, who
these days lives in Harlescott, Shrewsbury,
said: “If you go to Harmer Hill now and
keep on the main road past the Red Castle pub, up the road there’s a Presbyterian
chapel on the right hand side. Next door to
that is a men’s club, which is brick-built
now (it’s in fact now the village hall).
“Originally it was called The Reading
Room but that was knocked down and made
into a social club. It happened at the back of
there in a farmer’s field.
“I know Bob Lloyd is still alive, but he is
not very well and lives with his daughter
down south. The Pinnocks used to have a
shop in Harmer Hill. I think they went to
live somewhere like Whitchurch. I’ve lost
touch with everybody now.”
In a final twist, it turns out that the
photo had come from Mr Downward originally, a copy being loaned by him to the
Shrewsbury Chronicle years ago.
Dying wish unearthed
an illustrious history
Report by Toby Neal
[email protected]
DYING Mark Simpson told his
brother about two boxes of
family papers.
He said to Ben: “I want you to do
something with them. There’s a book
in them.”
Ben was never to see his brother again.
“It was a bit of an injunction, really,” said
Ben.
He knew that Mark, and a cousin, had
been researching the family history. And
after Mark’s death in 2012, it fell to Ben to
pick up the gauntlet, sift through the material, and continue the project.
The pressure had already been on from
another direction.
His daughter Helen had given him a
nicely bound book with blank pages inside
for Christmas and had asked him to “write
reminiscences for your granddaughter”.
The more Ben wrote, and the more he
dug, the more he found out about interesting ancestors in a family tree in which some
of the most illustrious names of Shropshire’s industrial history are interwoven.
From Horsehay, we have the Simpsons.
Then there are the Maws of Benthall and
Jackfield, as well as connections with the
famous Darbys.
Ben’s father, Doseley-born Sir Joseph
Simpson, was to break the mould, as he
achieved fame and distinction in a totally
different field – he became the first Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to
have risen through the ranks.
The family story has now been compiled
into a book by Ben called The Generations
In Between.
And he has done so despite having lost
the fingers of his right hand in an accident
with a circular saw in 1986.
Ben, 73, who lives near Oxford, said:
“They stitched them back on. They don’t
work brilliantly, but they’re all right.”
His book includes many insights into
Shropshire’s industrial past. There is,
for example, an account of the visit by
his great-grandfather Joseph Simpson to
Ironbridge in 1854. Joseph wrote about
the blast furnaces he saw and told of going
700ft down a coal mine at Madeley.
During Joseph’s visit he called at the All
Labour in Vain, at Horsehay, and writes
that he was amused to see the pub sign,
which depicted washerwomen scrubbing a
Joseph Simpson, who was chairman of the company
The Simpson children at home at Moreton Coppice in 1924
black boy in a tub to try to turn him white.
This sign remained a sometimes controversial feature of the pub – now demolished –
up until its closure in about 2010.
For Ben’s grandfather, also called Joseph,
an event which was to shape his life came in
his childhood.
In 1884, when he was nine, his uncle
Henry Charles Simpson became manager of
Horsehay Iron Works and then, two years
later, owners the Coalbrookdale Company
sold the firm. Henry and another uncle, Alfred Simpson, leased part of the works and
Wellington Boys’ Grammar School Under-13 rugby team from 1962-63
The Horsehay Works, which was run by the Simpson family
founded the Horsehay Company. Joseph
was to work there and was chairman for
several years before his retirement in 1949.
He had married in 1903 Dora Maw, daughter of Arthur Maw who, with his brother
George, founded the Jackfield Tile Company.
Ben’s father, yet again named Joseph but
known to his family in his early youth as
Toby, and latterly as Joe, was born on June
26, 1909, in a small house called Greenhurst, in St Luke’s Road, Doseley, but the
family later moved to nearby Moreton Cop-
pice, Horsehay. He excelled in sports, his
22ft 3ins (6.79 metres) long jump at Oundle
School setting a school record.
He joined the Met in 1931, eventually becoming the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Knighted in the 1959 New Year
Honours, he served as Commissioner for a
decade before his death in service in 1968.
His funeral was attended by members of
the royal family and senior politicians.
l Generations In Between is published by
Graffiti Press and can be ordered through
www.simpson-heritage.uk
Mystery over rugby player
Here’s a special message for
the boy on the front row, far
right, in this junior Shropshire
rugby team of over 50 years
ago.
And it is this. Who on earth
are you?
Local historian Allan Frost
of Telford has been trying to
identify all his team-mates
in this picture of Wellington
Boys’ Grammar School under13 rugby team for the 1962-63
season.
After we published it in Pictures From The Past readers
came forward to help him with
the names. All names, that is,
except one.
Allan says those who have
been identified – there is a bit
of doubt in one or two cases –
are thought to be:
Back row, from left: Lawrence ‘Olly’ Blakeman, Mick
Kelsall, Terry (?) Heighway,
Bob Parsonage, Barry Turner,
Colin Blaney (?).
Middle row: Allan ‘Jack’
Frost, Leonard (?) R Davies
(‘Lard’), Phil Morris, Richard
Young, Dave Newton, Jim Garvey.
Front row: Michael Scott,
Richard Pryzbilko, Brian
Lewis, and the sole unknown.
“It would be useful if people
could confirm or if necessary
correct these names, and please
pass on my thanks to all your
readers who helped fill in the
detail,” said Allan.
Call Toby Neal on (01952) 241458 or email [email protected]