British style poppy for November 11.

[Lallans]

When visiting some of our towns and cities if you understand what you are looking at you can often see the effects of bombs and rockets on the urban landscape.

Things such as rows of houses with a sudden gap, sometimes on both sides of the street, where 1940s or 50s houses have been built to fill in the damage. The bombs were usually dropped in 'sticks' of six, so using the virtual mappings available you can sometimes tour an area and pick out the line of gaps in the original buildings.

The V1s and V2s were more destructive and resulted in approximate circles of rebuilding around the point of impact.

Of course some places were so badly affected that whole areas were cleared away and all new houses built. Some were covered in prefabricated houses - they were meant to be a temporary measure until 'real' houses could be built, but such was the need for housing that they were kept long after their planned lifespan. I can remember 'prefabs' in the 1960s. Many newly weds after the war moved into a prefab then into a larger house and then back into a prefab when the kids left home. Some moved in and never moved out again.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

I believe it was Prince Charles that made the remarks about how the luftwaffe had merely left piles of rubble and it was the British social housing authorities themselves who had really uglified those areas?