Loughborough Zeppelin Attack Anniversary

The story of the Zeppelin raid on Loughborough, which took place on the night of 31st January 1916, and took the town and its inhabitants by surprise, is well-documented, both on this site (1) and elsewhere. The fate of the Captain of L20 was also covered in a post on this blog in February last year, written by Zeppelin raid expert, Ian Castle. But what of some of the people who were injured in the raid, but survived, and what further news came to light after the raid?     

Joseph Walter Page, whose wife and two children had been killed on Empress Road when the Zeppelin bomb descended onto the street, took out a lawsuit against the Crown in November 1929, following a petition to George V the previous year. He was seeking compensation of £6,868 for the loss of his family and his family home. He had initially received the sum of £19 in compensation, and in 1918 had claimed £1,500, but this had never been paid to him.

In January 1931, Mr Albert Edward Bowler, organist and choirmaster at Wood Gate Baptist church for 28 years, had the following memory of the 1916 Zeppelin attack on Loughborough. At the time of the Zeppelin raid, he had a shop on Empress Road selling ‘smallware’, i.e., items of haberdashery, like braid, or tape, and he was witness to the accidental death of Mr Josiah Gilbert, and Mrs Page and her two children, as well as receiving a number of wounds himself.

Miss Mary Elizabeth Askew was injured by a Zeppelin bomb when she was returning home from Caldwell’s hosiery factory on Church Gate, with some others of the workers. Her friend, Miss Ethel Higgs was killed, but two other workers, Miss Woodcock, and Miss Weston, escaped with lesser injuries than Miss Askew herself for her leg was shattered in the incident and she was thereafter unable to work and earn enough money to look after her widowed mother and her disabled sister. In mid-1917, Miss Mary Elizabeth Askew married Gerald Lovatt. In 1932 She received £69 compensation from a government fund of about £40,000,000 (2).

In the biography of Arthur Edward Shepherd, he suggests that at some point a further Zeppelin bomb was found in the canal, quite some time after the event of 31st January 1916. A comprehensive search of the local newspapers hasn’t thrown up anything, however, in January 1936, a live Zeppelin bomb was found in a nearby village. 20 years after the dropping of the bombs, a champion hedge-cutter by the name of Mr Grewcock - who had actually won 89 hedge-cutting contests – along with his fellow hedge-cutter, Mr Ison, both from Market Bosworth, were employed by Mr Burrows, who owned Cropston House Farm, to trim some hedges in a field called The Dumples (3), on Mr Burrows’ farm.

Using heavy hedge-cutting knives to do the work, the two men then cleared up the debris and made a fire. It was while they were watching the fire burn well that they spotted a long metal object lying under the remaining hedge, which they recognised as a German bomb. They carefully picked it up and carried it away from the source of the fire. It was clearly an unexploded bomb, and Mr Grewcock was of the opinion that it was one that had fallen into the canal at Loughborough during the Zeppelin raid of 1916.

So, the bomb was found in Cropston, and the two hedge-cutters handed it over to David Thomas, the police constable for Newton Linford, who took it away carefully. It was eventually taken to the Leicestershire police headquarters, and perhaps ended up at the Glen Parva depot of the Leicestershire Regiment, where I presume it was defused.

January 1941 was the 25th anniversary of the falling of the Zeppelin bombs on Loughborough, and a reporter wrote in the Leicester Chronicle of 8 February 1841 on how the event was initially reported in the newspapers and how reports changed over time. So, for example, initially, there was no mention made of any location for the attacks, more specific than The Midlands, but within a day or two reports were beginning to include the work ‘Leicestershire’. On the third day, reports were using the phrase ‘The Great Raid’, a phrase which continued to be used until reports of the event began to tail off – which took about a week.

On 31st January 2016, the centenary of the Zeppelin raid was commemorated through a number of events taking place in the town, which included a guided walk from the Carillon, to Orchard Street, where the first bomb fell in the yard of what was then the pub called the Crown and Cushion; to The Rushes, where the second bomb landed; and down to Empress Road, where the third bomb fell on a field close to Thomas Street, and the final bomb landed close to the Herbert Morris factory. This was followed in the evening by the unveiling of a new memorial plaque on The Rushes at the bottom of the stairs that leads up to The Rushes shopping area.   

The granite cross in the middle of the road called The Rushes

The plaque close to the Herbert Morris factory on Empress Road.

Taking part in the guided walk on the morning of 31st January 2016

The memorial plaque on The Rushes, unveiled on 31st January 2016

(1) A guided walk, a Commemorative Walk 2016, other Commemorative Events 2016, The Story of Josiah Gilbert Part 1 and Part 2, WW1 and the Zeppelin Raids

(2) The report is difficult to read, but it is probably £40,000,000 given that another report had suggested the total compensation likely to be paid out could reach £44,000,000. 

(3) The Dumples is an ancient path in Anstey that leads from The Martin High School on Links Road, to Cropston.

Posted by lynneaboutloughborough 31 January 2021

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Dyer, Lynne (2021). Loughborough Zeppelin attack anniversary. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2021/01/loughborough-zeppelin-attack-anniversary.html  [Accessed 31 January 2021]

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