Was your family in Bath Road, Emsworth in 1943? Helen Price, daughter of Jack Victor Morgan, visited Emsworth Museum in June to try and find out more about an unexploded bomb dropped by the Luftwaffe that destroyed her father’s family home and that of a neighbour.
Helen believes, and the 1939 directory confirms, that the Morgan family lived at No. 13 but according to another website the houses destroyed were Nos 5 and 6. Does anyone know whether the houses in Bath Road have been renumbered?
Jack Morgan and his twin sister, Joan, were born in Lee-on-Solent to Alfred Thomas (Tom) Morgan and his wife Clara (née Fisher) on 25th July 1924. They had two older sisters. Jack and his family moved to Bath Road sometime in the 1930s and later father Tom began working as a bus driver for Southdown Motor Services. On the night of the bombing the family were not in the house. Jack wanted something from his bedroom so he rushed inside, up the stairs, and at that moment the bomb fell on the home. It did not explode but the force of the impact blew Jack through a window. He survived and lived to tell his own children the tale.
The Morgans and their neighbours were evacuated to Washington Road School until they could be rehoused. The photograph above shows the unexploded bomb being winched aboard a lorry. There is little sign of the remains of the bombed houses that were built sometime in the late 1920s.
Helen knows that her grandparents later lived in Victoria and St James roads. Any help to flesh out these facts would be greatly appreciated.
Emsworth Maritime & Historical Trust August 2023
