Beales, bombs and evidence within the archives

Bournemouth suffered a devastating aerial assault when 23 May 1943, a German ‘Tip and Run’ raid attacked the town.  The incident is well recorded as the cost in human lives and physical destruction was severe with a reputed 130 deaths and the levelling of over 50 buildings.  Amongst the premises badly affected were two large hotels, the Metropole and Central, as well as Beales Department Store where a severed gas main added to the peril faced by civilians and emergency services alike. 

Two recently acquired collections at DHC offer different, but complementary evidence on this event and its aftermath. A small collection (D-3080) of material purchased at auction thanks to Dorset Archives Trust consists of the privately kept records of a local Boscombe resident who meticulously maintained a log of all alerts and actual aerial attacks made on Bournemouth during WWII.

The handwritten material provides the time and date of each alert or attack as well as the location and type of any bomb dropped, including the author’s own location at that same time.  The collection also includes a map identifying the bomb sites.  On the day of the notorious attack, the author clearly records the raid (‘alert number 864’) as being at 1pm.  They then record the fact that Beales was hit ‘1 HE (High Explosive) and fire’ along with a list of all the other premises affected.  It is a very matter-of-fact account with no commentary or description accompanying it.  However, it does provide an excellent guide to anyone seeking to understand the fraught, and sometimes lethal business of life during wartime in Bournemouth. 

A record taken in earlier this year as part of the Beales archive (D-BEL), provides a different but related view that started with the appalling damage wrought by the German raid.  It is a photographic record of the reconstruction of Beales, presented to the architects (Messrs. Jackson and Greenen) by the construction company which undertook the work (James Drewitt & Co).  It shows, through a series of images taken between 1952 and 1955, the store rising once again from the bombed–out shell to the structure that was only recently vacated when the business went into receivership.  Apart from being an excellent record of how the building was reconstructed, the images are perhaps a symbol of postwar Bournemouth’s regeneration and growing confidence as the country more generally shook off the restraints of rationing (July 1954) and moved into an era of greater consumer choice. 

 

Both archival items tell parts of a traumatic story for Bournemouth and are in many ways a microcosm of Britain’s wartime and post-war experiences.  As we move into an era where living memory of these events is almost unknown (the passing in June 2020 of Dame Vera Lynn is a high profile example), we should carefully preserve this material and other records like them as critical parts of our shared experience and heritage without which we will struggle to understand how the present shape of our towns and cities came into being. 

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