Plympton In The Blitz

A Memory of Plympton.

My name is Robert Best. I was born June 24th. 1939 in Plymouth and evacuated to Princetown in 1941. My Mother, her parents and I moved to Plympton when I was 3 years old. I have clear memories of Princetown, of riding the train up from Yelverton and of first arriving at the house in Plympton. We had no Shelter and we all huddled in the cupboard under the stairs with the back door open when the raids were on. One bomb landed behind us, maybe above Merrifield Rd. and it blew in the Fanlight over the front door and produced cracks radiating from the corners of all the windows on that side. I remember my Mother taking me up to a house on Plymbridge Road, behind PGS, that was bombed out the previous night. There was no roof and the curtains were flapping in the breeze.

We were adjacent to the fields directly across from Skew Bridge, which field routinely flooded in the winter. These were later filled in and are now where the football fields are. It wasn't that long before that Plympton could be accessed by ship or boats. There were old mooring posts in a marsh by the Old priory, close to Hele Arms. One year, before the filling in, someone built a Greyhound Racing training circuit in the field directly adjacent to Skew Bridge.

There was a low concrete building next to the railway just downhill from the Bridge where I was fitted for my first Gas mask, a two-coloured one (blue and red?) with a Duck Beak type of exhaust vent.

My Father was on RADAR at Rame Head artillery battery and later spent 4 years in Assam and Burma. He survived. He used to tell of coming off duty in the morning and making his way, via the CremylI Ferry, into the burning City and asking an ARP Warden if our house, off Ford Park Rd., was still there.

I attended St. Mary's primary school until age 11 (remember the 11+?) then PGS until 18. I moved to America in 1968 and now live in the San Francisco Bay area.