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Evidence of WW2 Sea Mills

corrugated metal buried in a rockery

A resident of West Parade, Simon Preece recently wrote to Sea Mills 100 asking for help to identify this structure hiding in his garden rockery.

We think it’s one of the many shelters families had in their gardens to protect them during air raids in WW2. There was an public shelter on Sea Mills Square, underneath where the children’s playground is now. There was also one for the pupils and teachers at the school in Riverleaze.



You can see the outline of the public shelter on the 1946 aerial photograph of Bristol available at Bristol Know Your Place. If you explore the map you’ll see a lot of other WW2 infrastructure too. There are water tanks on the Pentagon and huts for US troops on the golf course.



Not everyone used the public shelter. People would not have wanted to walk far at night during an air raid, so a lot of people built their own.

We think Simon’s shelter would have been a bit like this one that Keith Howell remembers in his garden in Sylvan Way. Keith sent us this diagram (right) which shows how they were constructed.

Keith remembers, “Air raids at night were a regular occurrence. We were issued with an Anderson air-raid shelter to be shared with the Gale family next door. Its erection involved digging a hole, bolting together the corrugated iron sheets to form a small hut in place within the hole, fastening seats along the two sides and finally covering the curved roof with turf. This must have been used many times during the worst of the Bristol air-raids even though Sea Mills was not a major target for the bombing. We could see, from the open door of the shelter, the light of the fires in Bristol city centre, 5 miles away.” 

Simon has cleared the area around his shelter and you can see where the corrugated metal goes into the ground. It looks like someone at sometime has at least partly filled the hole with concrete, and cut off most of the metal at ground level.

Photos (including main image): Simon Preece

We know that quite a few air raid shelters of various types still exist in Sea Mills. Some people have repurposed them as sheds. If you have one we’d love to see pictures,. We’d also like to hear your memories of them. Please email us info@seamills100.co.uk



If you would like to know more about WW2 in Bristol, Bristol Museums and Archives have a set of interesting resources here. There is also a research guide to help you do your own research at Bristol Archives which holds a large amount of original WW2 documents which can be viewed in the archive searchroom in Hotwells.

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SS Great Britain Return

Fifty years today on the 19th July 1970, exactly 127 years after it was originally launched, the SS Great Britain finally made it back to the dry dock in Bristol dock in which it was built. It had waited the previous two weeks in the Cumberland Basin for a tide high enough to take it into the dock.

It’s final voyage on 5th July down the Avon, past our Sea Mills Garden Suburb and under the Clifton Suspension Bridge had been witnessed by many from the area.

A first glimpse of the SS Great Britain on her return

Tim Wallis remembers that day well, “it was heartening to get the first glimpse of it come around the horseshoe bend, it felt like an honour to have this on our river after the distance it had travelled all the way from the Falklands. It was a special moment. There was a feeling of this is it, it’s no longer a story – it’s here”. Many gathered on the banks of the Avon that day, watching alongside Tim and his wife Mary. There weren’t many places you could stand safely and it must have been travelling quite slowly as Tim remembers the crowd trotting down the Portway to see the ship pass under the suspension bridge. At that point Tim found himself standing next to Jack Hayward, the man who had paid for the whole operation “it felt like a real team effort”.

The ship had travelled across the Atlantic on a pontoon but floated itself from Avonmouth to the docks. Many Sea Mills residents remember seeing in it as children, either from the school playing fields or being taken down to the river with their parents to see it. Mandy Meek is glad she saw it now but at the time it was a different matter “I was a teenager and resented getting up early to watch this lump of rust floating up the river.” The 37 years the ship had been left in Sparrow Cove in the Falklands had not been kind to her.

The Avon is notoriously difficult to navigate, with tricky tides and the horseshoe bend which has been the site of many accidents involving large vessels. Avonmouth provided channel pilots to guide ships along the river and the pilot on the SS Great Britain that day was Shirehampton resident, Fred Amphlett. His son Ed remembers “The ship had come into Avonmouth the previous evening, they were planning to take it up the channel that day but it was too late. My father was lucky, there was a rota for the pilots and he was on, so he got the opportunity to bring the ship in. I was a shipping agent on the dock and I gave him a lift, as I watched the ship depart I was very tempted to step on board and go with him. I wish I had now! It was quite a nice day and there were lots of people lining the route, cheering as it went past, it was quite a spectacle. My father took the ship as far as the locks in Bristol and then a dock pilot took over. Looking back it was an interesting, fun day and I’m quite proud of the old man for doing the thing. I’m sure he was a bit anxious at the time because there was a lot of media attention, but for him it was just an everyday job”.

Find out more
https://www.ssgreatbritain.org/your-visit/collection-stories/ss-great-britain-returning-bristol
https://www.ssgreatbritain.org/story/incredible-journey
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Britain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggbCAa3ebzg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayJDPjeoWhQ