The bombing of Cumberland Gardens, 1943

I have posted before about a bombing raid on The Lawn, taken from bomb reports kept at the Hastings Museum. This post is about a raid on the 19 February 1943 which caused much damage across a large area of St Leonards. I have selected another short road affected in that raid, Cumberland Gardens, to show the wealth of information that it can offer. At present the reports are in date order and then alphabetical by street. I came across it in carrying out volunteer work, typing the data onto a spreadsheet. The actual page is shown below. The street consists of three sets of semi-detached houses: on the north side, from the west, nos. 1 and 2, and 3 and 4, with nos. 5 and 6 on the south side. Was the unnumbered school also on the south side ?

There are a number of interesting points about this page. At 1 Cumberland Gardens we have the names of the householders, Miss Mathias and Miss Doubleday, and that of the actual owner, Miss Doubleday. The rateable value was given as “£96(2)” with the 2 meaning that there were two apartments. The rateable value gives an idea of how valuable a property was, and shows that no. 1 was more valuable than nos. 2-6.

Those properties were all occupied by the military. I am guessing that they housed officers but I could be wrong. Note that no. 2 was ‘holed inside & out by U.X.B.’, an unexploded bomb.

The school, Hastings & St Leonards Ladies College, was run by Miss Gardner but the house was owned by Miss Griffin and Miss Sharp, who would be hard to identify. The College was founded in 1883 and in 1912 also had premises on Dane Road. We are told that 20 feet in length of the playground wall was blown over.

The form also states that the road had five bomb craters. I wonder if any of this damage to the road and the houses is visible today ?

What about the newspapers ? Due to censorship this source, which I use a lot, is of little or no value during World War II. I did check genealogical sources for a little more information. In September 1939 the ‘Register’, a list of civilians created for rationing purposes, listed at no. 1 Frederic Doubleday, a retired dentist, his wife Rosa, and daughters Rosa and Dora in a household of eight. Rosa the wife died in December 1941 while her widower died in December 1942, both in Dorking. The family had probably evacuated.  Either of the daughters could be the right resident at the time of the raid, perhaps both, as the details in the bomb damage report appear to have been written in a hurry before being typed.

The Register also gives, at 1a, Elaine Mathias and Bessie Knight. The next property was given as Airth Lodge, presumably no. 2, with Helen F.M.A. Bruce, a widow, the householder; she died in August 1941, age 80. She has a detailed obituary with a photo in the Hastings and St Leonards Observer, 9 August 1941. She was the widow of (Eric Henry) Stuart Bruce, scientist and aeronautical inventor, who died at no. 2 in 1935. She was herself a poetess (with a booklet titled ‘Sussex songs’ published in 1927), and the couple had wintered for many years in St Leonards before moving there eleven years before. Many of his papers, including an autobiography, are in the Bodleian, Oxford. The next property was St Giles, presumably no. 3, with Rupert Wontner, a headmaster, living with wife and daughters. It appears that no. 4 was housing some of his students; a couple of entries are in black, meaning those people are still alive. A 1939 advertisement makes it clear that Wontner was running a school, Saint Giles, for ‘public schools and Royal Navy day boys and boarders’ from Cumberland Gardens. The ladies’ college was not easily identifiable in the Register.