Air raid shelter

Air Raid Shelter at St Leonard's Court

This air raid shelter was built in 1939 and extended in late 1940 to early 1941 to serve St Leonard's Court, a residential development of eighty-three flats built between 1934 and 1938 by local builder Mr F.G. Fox. The shelter was designed to accommodate forty-eight people.

The shelter is largely constructed of brick with concrete block walls in the western compartments and on the stair, topped with flat concrete slab roofs. The entrance is contained within a brick turret with Flemish bond brickwork and a conical tile roof surmounted by a metal weather vane. The shelter itself is contained within an earth mound bounded by a brick retaining wall approximately 1 metre high with stone coping. Beneath the wall at ground level is a metal plate, though it is unknown whether this extends across the whole shelter.

The shelter runs east-west and is entered through a door in the turret, from which steps descend to a central corridor. On each side of the corridor are two compartments designated for men and women. The westernmost compartments, used during the day, are lined with timber benches and have a pair of chemical lavatories behind a brick screen wall at the outer end. The easternmost compartments, intended for night use, are divided by brick screen walls into eight sections, four each side of a central passage. Each section contains three bunk beds (of which a few boards remain) and a small wooden shelf with an electric light socket and switch on the underside, with a small wooden baffle serving as a shade. At the end of each partition are numbered hooks, numbered 1 to 24 in the southern compartment and 25 to 48 in the north. The central corridor is also lined with numbered hooks. Each main compartment has a metal ladder at the outer end rising to a horizontal metal grille. At the eastern end is a stove ventilated through a vertical pipe. Adjacent to the stove is a metal letter box bearing the notice: "all communications should be signed by those associating themselves with them".

Following the Munich crisis in 1938, which heightened awareness of air raid risks, local authorities were legally required from early 1938 to formulate civilian shelter plans. From 1939, air raid precautions became compulsory for industry. The government provided shelters for those below a certain income threshold and issued guidance for private construction. While architects such as Sir Giles Gilbert Scott designed standard rectangular plan surface shelters for London shops, and W Braxton Sinclair FRIBA created a sophisticated shelter of similar plan for flats at Queen's Gate (published in the Builder in October 1938), most shelters were functional and basic.

The St Leonard's Court shelter is unusual in its plan, providing a higher standard of accommodation than typical government-led standards. It was apparently built by the developer of the flats, who felt strongly proprietorial towards the development. The quality of materials used in the superstructure, which forms part of the landscaped gardens, is also exceptional. The setting of the flats remains intact, including gate piers and overthrows. Remarkably, no other communal shelter appears to exist for the flats, and while other communal shelters are known elsewhere in the Borough, none matches this shelter in scale or quality. The shelter survives in remarkably good condition, with most of its original fittings intact, providing a clear impression of how it was used.