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Report - - Littlewoods air raid Shelter, Liverpool, June 2020 | Underground Sites | 28DaysLater.co.uk

Report - Littlewoods air raid Shelter, Liverpool, June 2020

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Shaun

28DL Regular User
28DL Full Member
History
(From Subbrit.org.uk) Merseyside was the second most heavily bombed part of Britain after London, and its air raid shelters would have seen a great deal of use during alerts and raids. The Littlewoods shelter is approximately 300m long, aligned on a northerly axis parallel to the Littlewoods building. In plan it resembles a chain of rectangles (with pairs of shelter chambers roughly 12m and 9m long along the four sides) joined by 9m long corridor galleries. It had 13 entrances evenly disposed along its length to facilitate filling from the west side of the factory - these sloping entrance passages joined the connecting corridor galleries at right angles giving excellent blast protection. The shelter was semi-buried using a cut and fill method with earth banked on top of it for bomb splinter protection, and may have begun as a Munich crisis trench rapidly dug during a few tense weeks in September 1938. Many of these were then lined with precast concrete wall and roof panels which were slotted together to give a degree of dryness and an illusion of permanence. Littlewoods’s shelter though is built with much stronger reinforced concrete and the clean timber board marks indicate higher quality and more expensive construction than normal. The shelter appears on a 1940 map.
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The place had an interesting atmosphere to it. with many tunnels its quite a big place (although not big enough to get lost in) and with the interesting art I would recommend a visit.

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Calamity Jane

i see beauty in the unloved, places & things
Regular User
Nicely shot Shaun, you got some great shots of this shelter. I hope they close that gaping hole soon though, its stayed so hushed & Id hate to see those beautiful drawings ruined.
 

Shaun

28DL Regular User
28DL Full Member
Nicely shot Shaun, you got some great shots of this shelter. I hope they close that gaping hole soon though, its stayed so hushed & Id hate to see those beautiful drawings ruined.
Supprised by the lack of modern day graffiti down there, i mean it is inevitable that some prick will put a tag over the old graffiti if this place doesn't get a proper hatch.
 

CureForPain

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
Nicely shot Shaun, you got some great shots of this shelter. I hope they close that gaping hole soon though, its stayed so hushed & Id hate to see those beautiful drawings ruined.
It's been finally sealed up now, the same knackered metal panels but with some new welded bolts. Kinda hope it lasts, just so they don't take the Wirral Council approach and entomb the whole thing in concrete...

For anyone interested in the shelter, I did a bunch of research and eventually tracked down one of the names behind the faces!

ULF.jpg


We had an exhibition almost ready to go at Western Approaches (possibly with a life-size reprint of one of the shelter walls) but there was some trouble getting the go-ahead from the council and then the batvirus hit, so not sure if it'll see the light of day now. Even did a bloody map!

Littlewoods Shelter MAP 2.4.jpg
 

Calamity Jane

i see beauty in the unloved, places & things
Regular User
It's been finally sealed up now, the same knackered metal panels but with some new welded bolts. Kinda hope it lasts, just so they don't take the Wirral Council approach and entomb the whole thing in concrete...

For anyone interested in the shelter, I did a bunch of research and eventually tracked down one of the names behind the faces!

ULF.jpg


We had an exhibition almost ready to go at Western Approaches (possibly with a life-size reprint of one of the shelter walls) but there was some trouble getting the go-ahead from the council and then the batvirus hit, so not sure if it'll see the light of day now. Even did a bloody map!

Littlewoods Shelter MAP 2.4.jpg
Thats pretty damn great. Who ever drew them did a very good likeness.
 

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