Sheltered spot!

I'd always thought this building was some sort of storage shed but I found out yesterday that it was actually my school's old WWII air raid shelter. I couldn't find any details about this particular one but I did stumble across an interesting article, written during the war, on the West Sussex County Council website about the school shelters in another town not too far away. I have transcribed the article below... and did smile at the irony of the last line, considering our current situation!


“Air raid shelters in schools”, Worthing Herald, October 25th 1940
 
As a result of numerous complaints reaching this office, a Herald reporter toured some of the town’s school air raid shelters, to find out just what they were like under working conditions.
 
In every case he found conditions far from comfortable. Damp walls and floors, children, some wrapped in rugs and blankets, sitting on home-made stools, boxes, mats, and, in some instances the bare floor – except in one shelter where seating has just been installed – and in almost total darkness. Many of the teachers have endeavoured to rig up some sort of temporary lighting with candles and hurricane lamps, and to improvise seating for a few of the children with any odd bits of timber they could lay their hands on.
 
At one school, where the floors of the shelters are in a very bad state, consisting of a cement centre surrounded by rubble, the head teacher feels that it would be detrimental to the health of the children to use the shelters, and she now keeps them in the school building during the ‘alerts’. 

After a long spell in these shelters, she described the children as looking like a ‘regiment of corpses’ when they emerged, covered with dust from the primitive floor. Although they were sitting on mats ‘four children to a tiny drill mat’ there were many complaints from irate parents about ruined clothing.
 
Amongst the teachers as a whole, however, there is now a feeling that things are about to improve in the immediate future. Many were able to report that a start had now been made on the eagerly awaited lighting, heating and seating equipment. Meanwhile, they are just ‘making the best of things.’