The item I would like to add took place between 1939 -1945. In early 1941 my mother and I returned to Yarmouth from Castle Ashby, Northhants. My two brothers were evacuated with their school to Retford. I was about four & half years old and, as the war was rather quiet, we returned. This is where maybe someone might be of help? Does any one know the year and month when an area known as COBB'S PLACE WAS BOMBED BY A GERMAN AIRCRAFT?

The day when the air-raid siren went my second oldest brother and I took to our indoor Morrison shelter, my brother's name was HERBERT WILLIAM (he was known as BUSTER by all his friends). It is possible that the bombs were meant for Grouts silk factory. To work out the location imagine standing in Middle Market Road facing toward the sea (east). Starting from Swirles Place, travel down to what was once the Co-op milk bottling dairy and the passageway on your left leads to Cobbs Place. It is or was now lock up garages but in the 1940s it was a row of houses divided by a passage, the bomb was a direct hit, destroying about 20 two up two down houses.

Our house was at the bottom, along a passage known as Swirles Buildings. The noise and the blast blew the back door and windows in, then came a rush of air which blew in the front door and windows (I understand this is known as filling the vacuum from the blast). As our shelter was in the front room I was cut by a peice of glass, not too badly though, and there was dust every where. Then came the sound of the all clear. Our mother was working at that time at BHS which was on Regent Road. She was allowed to come home on all clear. We could not get out at the back because of bricks and rubble, so we went out the front and around to the back. About four doors along from our house is another passage and at the bottom, piled up against our row there seemed to be nearly half a house with lots of broken timber. Police, firemen and air-raid wardens were pulling and digging in the rubble. I later learned that a young boy about my age and his mother were found wrapped in their mattress and bedding, alas they were dead. How many more fatalities there were I do not know.

If any one out there knows about COBBS PLACE and the dates of the bombing I would be grateful if you could let me know. It is our duty to our younger ones that they remember our history of what is a great town (YARMOUTH). Colin Browne

Cobbs Place was bombed on 31st October 1941. Added by Laura Matthews