Old Properties & Anderson Shelters

[eleanor2]

Do you have an old Anderson shelter buried in your garden still? When we moved in to our house, the back garden was full of bricks & very uneven, there was also what looked like an oblong shaped rim of stone sticking up proud of the grass which we presumed was once a flower bed which I didn't want to keep. So, we set about turning the grass/ soil over & removing odd bricks and tried digging out the remains of the oblong shape of concrete, but it was deep in to the earth. In the end, we had to knock the top of the perimeter off to level the soil and grass over it. A neighbour looking over the fence introduced themselves & asked what we were doing' and then told us it was an old Anderson shelter that ran quite deep in to the earth! I wondered how many more are there still out there, and whether they have been utilised in to something else over the gears?

[bookbinder]

Here's a start:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/21/how-britains-abandoned-anderson-shelters-are-being-brought-back-to-life

[MallyJ]

We had one when we moved in...it had been used for storage...notably about 7 wash boards.....it didn't stay long. We also had an outside lavatory and gas lighting in the kitchen......!!! Not too much had changed over the years...We did have a 50s style bathroom with an Ascot so we didn't have to get the tin bath down from the back of the kitchen door and set it up in front of the coal fire...

[Buenchico]

This might be of interest:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/21/how-britains-abandoned-anderson-shelters-are-being-brought-back-to-life

and/or this:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9363967/world-war-two-ashford-anderson-shelter-uk/

[eleanor2]

Thank you bookbinder/ Buen, great links there!
Mally, brilliant! How interesting!

[jno]

you might have been able to use it for isolating.

[eleanor2]

jno ;0) ... filled with earth long ago!

[retrocop]

I found what I believed to be the remains of an old Anderson at the bottom of our garden by our back gate.The bricks were below the present ground surface and were about the dimensions of such a structure in shape.

[eleanor2]

There must be a few out there still retro! My granddaughter came home earlier from school talking about VE day.. & that's what started a conversation off about the Anderson shelter buried in the garden. She even found a recording of a WW2 air raid siren, listening to it through a speaker, it must have been quite terrifying to hear for real!

[Tuvok]

There's a house near by that has a pillbox in the garden!

Another beach (no sand) has lots of pillboxes.