How tall are anderson shelters

Muriel told me that when we slept out there together, I just slept like a log throughout the whole thing; throughout all the raids. She stayed awake all the time, scared stiff by the noise. After the war, Hesketh said that the shelter was kept for a short while and may have been used to store garden tools or even as a shelter for the hens his parents kept. Margaret Elliott, 92, who lived in Canning Town, east London, says she saw the whole thing as an adventure at the time.

She was 13 when the war started and her father installed their shelter quite early on — she recalls playing in it prior to the air raids. My father made little steps inside for us to get down and a little seat for us to sit on. Elliott eventually moved out of the city as the bombing intensified. I remember by this time my mother was quite hysterical and my father decided to take us to her sisters in Hertfordshire. So, we got on the top deck of a bus and drove all the way up to London through where the docks were, where there were flames to either side of us.

I still have that attitude now, I just carry on. The survival of Anderson shelters is not only due to their sturdy structure. Millions of families took refuge in them during the war and told their stories to succeeding generations, preserving them in our cultural imagination, too. I think they do appeal to our den-building fascination.

They are an effective and fun way of educating young children about the realities of the home front, and many people are still putting them to good use in their gardens. Johnson says she intends to keep her shelter for as long as she owns her house and has plans to develop the inside as a sleep-out space for her children.

Topics Second world war History Property features. Reuse this content. The government advised civilians to take cover as soon as possible after hearing the warnings and several types of official and unofficial air raid shelters were provided for public use. The two most commonly used hideouts were Anderson and Morrison shelters. By far the most common 'private' shelters, Anderson shelters were designed to be put up at the bottom of a suburban garden and accommodate up to 6 people.

Made up of sheets of corrugated iron, the shelter was designed for easy assembly by the householder. In order to be fully effective, the shelter had to be dug into a 4ft deep pit in the ground, with the soil being heaped on top to provide cover against nearby bomb blasts.

Many people planted vegetables on top, making the most of the soil heaped on their makeshift dugouts. Anderson shelters tended to become waterlogged in winter, making them freezing cold and deeply unpleasant places to be. In response, the government developed a shelter that could be used within the home. The Morrison shelter was effectively a metal cage, in which the occupants would lie until an air raid subsided.

Often doubling as a kitchen table, Morrison shelters were supplied flat-packed for D. That wasn't as easy as it sounds - they had over parts and you'd almost need an engineering degree to put them together correctly. Around , Morrison shelters were used by the public. If one was unlucky enough to be out shopping, visiting relatives, or otherwise outside dashing distance of home when a raid was detected, there were always the public shelters in which to stay until the raid passed.

A public shelter could range from trenches dug in a local park to brick blockhouses on the corner of the street. Before that, householders who had been issued with free shelters and who didn't have big families sometimes allowed their slightly better off neighbours to share them. The shelters were very strong - especially against a compressive force such as from a nearby bomb - because of their corrugation.

Click here for further information about their strength and durability. And their construction instructions are here. Anderson shelters were effective only if half buried in the ground and covered in a thick layer of earth. They were therefore inherently cold, dark and damp. In low-lying areas the shelters tended to flood, and sleeping was difficult as the shelters did not keep out the sound of the bombings.

Families had to build their own bunk beds, or buy them ready made. If there was a toilet at all, it took the form of a bucket in the corner. Therefore, although some families slept in them every night, most people were reluctant to use them except after the air raid sirens had sounded - and often not even then.

People were recommended to take important documents with them, such as birth and marriage certificates and Post Office Savings books. But it was difficult to remember what to do when you had just woken from a deep sleep, it was totally dark and the sirens were wailing.

Here is an aerial view of a terrace in London's Nine Elms towards the end of the war. Two shelters can be seen towards the bottom of the picture.

Another problem was that the majority of people living in industrial areas did not have gardens where they could erect their shelters. The rest of those interviewed were either on duty at night or slept in their own homes. The latter group felt that, if they were going to die, they would rather die in comfort.

Many families tried to brighten their shelters in various ways, and they often grew flowers and vegetables on the roof.

One person wrote that "There is more danger of being hit by a vegetable marrow falling off the roof UrbanFoxxxx discovered these two delicious photos, proving, as she said, that "An Englishman's Anderson shelter is his castle, and he will bloody well decorate it within an inch of its life if he so pleases".

I particularly like the mock Tudor effect, so beloved of significant suburban dwellers. You can click on both photos to enlarge them. In best "Keep Calm and Carry On! But others were more nervous - and with good cause. After a parachute bomb hit a nearby school, one set of Bournemouth parents - the Heaths - decided to erect their shelter indoors, and cover it with sandbags. The lovely photo below was kindly sent to me by David Heath top right together with his brother and sister, all looking decidedly not at all scared!

The corrugated iron roofs of most of the shelters were collected by the authorities at the end of the war.