80 Years Since Shocking Explosion

It’s been 80 years since a V-1 ‘doodlebug’ bomb exploded on Senior Field, damaging Caen Wood Hall, the Pavilion, School House (now the Mills Centre) and causing School to close until Michaelmas Term 1944.   

Michael Moore (CH 1943), remembered vividly what happened. 

‘Three of us were near the perimeter of the cricket field when we heard the doodle bug approaching a long way off.’ It was the sound of one of the dreaded V-1 flying bombs, heading directly towards them. ‘One chap ran towards the pavilion,’ Moore continued, ‘one headed for the roller in the picture, and I hid behind the wall by the old Fives courts. The dreaded thing cut right above us and there was one terrifying thought: was it a glider or was it a dropper? We soon knew!’ Whilst Prince Fethi shepherded his class quickly into the Junior Gym, Moore and his friends ran for cover. ‘A piece of shrapnel struck one of the chaps in the hand, but fortunately the main blast went in the opposite direction to us’. 

By a stroke of luck, there were no serious injuries that day.

Sir Kyffin Williams, Art Master at the time, remembered how there ‘was a terrible bang and the interior of the pavilion became a haze of dust and plaster’, out of which emerged a ‘composed and undefeated’ Edward Bullin (Master 1913-46). It had been an extraordinary event, and one Physical Training teacher Prince Fethi remembered the rest of his life. ‘I was so impressed by the courage of the Highgate boys’, he recalled on a visit to School in 2003. 

Please contact Archives if you would like to see their collection of Shrapnel archives@highgateschool.org.uk