Earlier this year, we received an email from a former Wavertree resident, Tony Sheffield, who moved away in 1962 and has been living in South Africa since 1980. This is what he wrote:

"During the blitz, a bomb landed on a pair of semi-detached houses in Daffodil Road and destroyed both of them. They backed onto our house at 4 Mimosa Road, resulting in material damage to 4 (and presumably 6) Mimosa Road. My grandfather - who at one stage ran a market garden and nursery in Church Road - used to tell me about the damage, some of which was still evident in the 50s and early 60s. The walls were badly cracked, all the windows went and, most memorably of all, the loo was blown from the bathroom at the rear of the house to the front bedroom! Growing up there, I was disappointed that my grandfather had installed a Morrison shelter - a reinforced metal table inside the house - instead of the more glamorous Anderson shelter which graced some of the gardens in the road and made wonderful dens for young boys."

Then, in June, we heard from a new resident of Lance Lane, Paula Lockyer, who had discovered an Anderson shelter in her back garden. After initially intending to knock it down and clear the space, she decided to investigate how it came to be there. Tony's memories provide a clue: the Edge Hill railway sidings and the anti-aircraft guns on The Mystery were prime targets for German bombers. Paula decided that the shelter might, in fact, be worth preserving. How many other Anderson shelters, we wonder, survive? If you are aware of any, or if you have your own memories of Wavertree either during or after WW2, please contact our Local History Secretary Mike Chitty.