DId Craven Cottage ever get bombed by the German Luftwaffe ?

[tingtawng]

according to my uncle the area around the ground was heavilly bombed by the Nazi aircraft as it was a loading area for tanks and guns going over to France during WW2 ,never seen any info on this just hearsay.

[cebu]

The only bomb site I can really remember from the early fifties was the church on Fulham Palace Road. I'm not saying it was the only damage by any means.

[Fernhurst]

I remember a bomb crater on the corner of Felsham Rd and Putney High Street being there for years and years and years, as a kid (not born before or during the war) I used to to peer through a crack in the hoardings and really got quite a taste of adventure looking at the evidence of the war time raids.

In the early sixties the site was finally built on and became a Courts Furnishing store ( now demolished) I think?

My old man often told the story of the family (minus me) sleeping in one room in Fernhurst Road during the air raids...... one night the sirens went off and Mum snatched my sister and disappeared out the back door to the Anderson shelter in the back garden like a scalded cat..Dad and my brother were cosy and warm and couldn't be bothered to move ( those raids came over almost every night) but eventually he decided they better join Mum as the thumping of the bombs landing got closer to Fulham.
Eventually the all clear sounded and the sleepy family made there way back to house where they were shocked to find their sleeping accommodation covered by half the front wall of the house.


So there definite personal evidence of bombs falling in Fulham but whether The Cottage copped it I do not know.  :028:

[tingtawng]

it would be interesting to see a small publication of the games and teams during the war years and any anecdotes before any remembrances are lost to time .

[CorkedHat]

i think that this topic was dealt with on that other site and consensus of opinion was that although the immediate environs of Craven Cottage were bombed the actual ground was spared.
It was said that this was because the Luftwaffe had signed up a French collabarator to bomb the Cottage but as he was incapable of hitting a barn door from the inside, he failed. His name was Steve Marlet.

[The Equalizer]

I remember a bomb crater on the corner of Felsham Rd and Putney High Street being there for years and years and years, as a kid (not born before or during the war) I used to to peer through a crack in the hoardings and really got quite a taste of adventure looking at the evidence of the war time raids.

I believe it's called The Whistle And Flute these days...

There's tonnes of evidence to suggest massive bombing in Putney. When I lived on Merivale Road, the flat was really topsy turvy. You'd get sea sick just walking into the kitchen because of the dip towards the back. I found out that it wasn't down to subsidence, but a bomb that hit the gardens around the back of the house. It seems that all of Merivale Road on one side is like it.

In many other roads in the areas you can see terraces of large Victorian and Georgian houses, but in the middle is a new build block of flats.