Air Raids

The village did have a lot of air raids and a siren was sounded to raise the alarm. The period of the war when most air raids took place was from summer to Christmas of 1940. This was the time of The Battle of Britain between Britain and Germany. This battle was fought by the air forces and many aeroplanes flew over the village. It was a time when Britain felt particularly under threat of being invaded.

Once the air raids were over another tone of siren was sounded to announce the "all clear".

Bomb near the Village

The villagers felt they were very lucky as no bombs caused any damage in the village itself.

On a night in late September 1940 a large land mine did come down at the edge of a field near Linford Wood. It was a huge cigar shaped cylinder with a parachute, which caught in a tree stopping it from hitting the ground hard and exploding. When it fell, the house shook. The village children were warned not to go up Common Lane which lead to the site of the bomb.

The bomb was later taken to the gravel pits on the way to Newport Pagnell where it was buried in sand and detonated.

The force of the explosion caused windows as far away as Wolverton to be shattered. Local people were lucky the bomb did not explode because a lot of the village would have been damaged or destroyed.

A map showing the bomb site and detonation site.
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War in the Village
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