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An artist’s impression of how the redeveloped site will look |
Memorial for V2 victims moves closer
A MEMORIAL for 110 workers, women and children who died in a V2 rocket attack on Smithfield Market in 1945 is one step closer.
It follows years of campaigning by historians and residents to secure a permanent honour for those killed.
The ‘doodlebug’ hit at 11.30am, demolishing the corner of Charterhouse Street and Farringdon Road and smashing through the Victorian buildings into the railway tunnels beneath.
Among the dead were Smithfield workers and mothers and their children queuing at the market for what meager meat rations they could buy.
Some of the market buildings collapsed into a massive bomb crater.
It is thought that the real target of the bombs was Whitehall, but the V2 veered off course.
Rebuilt in the 1960s, the site has in recent years become a rundown eyesore.
But on Monday night councilors gave the go ahead for it to be transformed into a 27,100 square-metre, 11-storey office block by developer BPP.
As part of the BPP’s commitment to the local area, it has agreed to pay thousands for a new memorial.
The request was made by campaigner Leo Chapman, from Dufferin Street, Finsbury, who asked for a slice of the £1,540,000 pot that BPP agreed to donate for community use.
For years there has been a memorial tucked away in a vehicle access road behind the building.
It reads: “This stone commemorates the rebuilding of the fish, fruit, vegetable and flower market following destruction by bombing on the 8th March 1945.”
A plaque to the market workers who died in the attack was installed in 2005.
Mr Chapman said: “I have an interest in local history and noticed that one of the V2 Smithfield victims was Alice Wakeling from the Peabody Estate where I live.
“But when I went to look at the existing memorial, I noticed it commemorated only lost buildings, not lost people.
“I took the opportunity at the planning meeting to ask for a proper memmorial and the developer’s agent, and many others in the room, were very supportive.”
V2 rockets, crammed with 1,700 pounds of high explosives, bombarded Islington in the final stages of World War II.
They were the successors to V1s, which also rained down on the borough. The V1 attacks are commemorated with a plaque at Highbury Fields.
Former Islington Mayor Mary Powell, 83, who narrowly missed a direct bomb hit on her old Angel school, said: “There was such fear when the V1s and V2s came. I think it is wonderful to have a new memorial to the Smithfield attack because it is only right that everybody should be remembered.”
BPP agent Barnaby Collins said: “Agreeing to a memorial was the decent thing to do. Smithfield is a very historic area and it would be ignorant to ignore the past. The developer would be delighted to assist in any way he can.” |
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