The wealth of fascinating historic information and photographs that can be found on the internet never ceases to amaze me. I stumble across so many websites dedicated to various aspects of the regions history, usually whilst searching for information about something else entirely. I log them away amongst my favourites, intending to revisit when I have more time, but quite often forget just what I have bookmarked and rediscover them by accident months later. This was the case with the remarkable Lowestoft Letters.
Lowestoft Letters is a collection of correspondence sent by local resident Alfred J. Turner to his son between 1940 and 1945 which has been transcribed and made available online by his great grandson, G. A. Michael Sims. Although the original letters have long since disappeared, Turner’s original drafts were found in 1995 and they paint a vivid and often very personal account of life in the seaside town during the Second World War. News reports of the time were combined with Turner’s own eye witness accounts of bombing raids, machine gun attacks and day to day life throughout the war, not only in Lowestoft but from other parts of the region too. There are reports of the Baedeker air rads on Norwich, the bombing of the rail line at Haddiscoe, and the capture of a young German lad of 17, the soul surviving crew member from a Dornier which crashed near Beccles. Although away at the time, Turner also reports on the aftermath of what became known as the Waller’s Raid on Lowestoft in January 1942 in which 71 people were killed, many of whom had been inside Waller’s restaurant in the town centre at the time. More details of that raid can be found in an article which was published in the Lowestoft Journal in 2012.
In November 1942, Alfred Turner wrote of an attack on Oulton Broad which began just as they sat down to lunch: “Bombs were dropped at Oulton Broad on the Maltings and Robinson’s boat yard in Caldecott Road. The former are badly damaged I hear and there was a new Motor Launch lying on Robinson’s slipway, ready to be launched, which was cut clean in half. The bombs fell about 1.15pm and the men there used to take their dinner aboard the new boat but that particular day they did not or they would all have been killed. As it was there was one man who lost a leg and four others slightly injured. A pleasure wherry lying at her mooring had a bomb through her and sank forthwith. There was some damage to local bungalows, roofs, etc, but the Old Malthouse was not hit, very fortunately indeed. I was rather worried about ‘Hiawatha’ but Rix saw Mrs. Carver and she said that all the boats are all right.“
The letters were an incredible find and are an amazing snapshot of local history. Check out the rest of the Old Lowestoft website too for more photographs and ephemera from the family archives and personal collection of local bookseller, G.A. Michael Sims.