At 4.40 pm on Monday, 30 September 1940, Sherborne was heavily raided by a force of some 150 German bombers which, having been turned away from Yeovil by fighters, dropped several hundred bombs (about 60 tons) in a straight line from Lenthay to Crackmore.
About eighty-six buildings were destroyed in the town, including ten houses in Lenthay and Foster’s Infant School in Newland, though neither Sherborne Abbey nor Sherborne School were hit. Seventeen civilians, including six children, died as a result of the bombings and thirty-one casualties were taken to hospital.
For several weeks, due to an unexploded bomb in the road at the junction of Half Moon Street and South Street, all east-west traffic had to go through the School courts. Six bombs landed on the School playing fields and the Upper was out of action for the rest of the season. Six more bombs fell in the School precincts and, although no School building received a direct hit, roof tiles were blown off and windows destroyed, including the West window in the School chapel and all the windows in the BSR and Carrington Building. By a strange coincidence, it was an Old Shirburnian, Squadron Leader Peter Devitt, who led the eight RAF Spitfires that intercepted the Heinkel He.111 bombers over Sherborne that day.
Find out more:
- Essays written by boys at Sherborne School about their experiences during the bombing of Sherborne in 1940
- Air Ministry Report made in 1946 on the bombing of Sherborne on 30 September 1940
- ARP map showing locations of the bombs that fell on Sherborne on 30 September 1940
- Squadron Leader Peter Devitt and the bombing of Sherborne
- Civilian casualties of the bombing of Sherborne on 30 September 1940
- Annie Warren (1909-2004): lost three children in the Sherborne Blitz
- Online Exhibition: Sherborne School and the Second World War
- Sherborne School and the Second World War
Further reading:
Katherine Barker, Sherborne Camera (The Dovecote Press, 1990)
Alan V. Bethell, Two by Two: An Evacuee’s Story (Epam (UK) Ltd., Plymouth, 1986)
Jack Dimond, Dimond Gems. The Life and Tales of a Dorset Farmer (2000)
Patrick Francis, Old Yet Ever Young. A New History of Sherborne School (Exeter, Short Run Press, 2020). Photography by David Ridgway.
A.B. Gourlay & D.F. Gibbs, Chief. A Biography of Alexander Ross Wallace, 1891-1982 (Sherborne School, 1983)
Mary Hickman, The Bombing of Sherborne, September 30th 1940 (Sherborne Museum Abstracts no.6, 2010)
Monica M. Hutchings, Romany Cottage, Silverlake (Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., 1946)
Rodney Legg, Dorset at War (Halsgrove, 2010)
Rodney Legg, Sherborne & Castleton (Halsgrove, 2004)
Cliff Mogg, The Council House Kid. Growing up in 1950s Sherborne (The Dovecote Press, 2000)
Henry More, Sherborne at War. Including a reappraisal of the 1940 air raid on Sherborne (Sherborne Museum, 2023)
Alec Oxford, The Known History of the Shops in Cheap Street, Sherborne (Somerset & Dorset Family History Society, 2005)
B. Pickering Pick (ed.), The Sherborne Register 1550-1950 (Old Shirburnian Society, 4th ed., 1950)
Gerald Pitman, Sherborne Observed. A Handbook to the Conservation Area and its Setting (The Abbey Bookshop, 1983)
Littleton C. Powys, Still the Joy of It (The Sundial Press, 2011)
A.H. Trelawny-Ross, Their Prime of Life. A Public School Study (Warren & Son Ltd., 1956)
For further information about the Sherborne School Archives please contact the School Archivist.
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