Defence and Defiance - St Pauls Cathedral and the Watch
3rd March 2025St Lawrence Jewry
I attended this year's Annual Derek Melluish Memorial Lecture of the cityguides organisation, on the subject of "Defence and Defiance - St Paul's Cathedral and Watch during World War II". Presented by David Morse, it was held in the Church of St Lawrence Jewry, in the Guildhall Yard, and was attendedf by many Livery Masters.
David Morse gave a most interesting presentation on the Watch at St Paul's and how it had grown out of the initial Zeppelin raids of the First World War. He talked about the work that needed to be done to allow the Watch to function in the Cathedral, and how a total of 400 people or so were involved, ranging from Cathderal Staff to volunteers from nearby organisations.
Because of the famous picture of St Paul's dome, undamaged in the bomb smoke, I had always assumed that the Cathedral had survived the Blitz intact, unlike a huge area of buildings around Ludgate Hill which were completely destroyed. However, this was not the case and several pictures of quite severe damage were shown, but as far as possible, this damage was kept quiet for public morale purposes. Indeed, it was hit by a rain of incendiaries, some of which went down the cathedral drainpipes and were only found years later during cleaning and restoration work! It was also interesting to note that the Germans made their most effective raids when the Thames river was at its lowest tide, making it more difficult to get river water up the hill to put fires out.
The final twist to the talk was David's admission that one of the key characters in his talk was his grandfather, who had played a major role in the Watch and had continued to work at the Cathedral after the war.