ARP Control Room, Nottingham c.1940

4/7/2018

This staged photo shows the control room at Nottingham's ARP Headquarters in around 1940. It was into this nerve centre that all air raid incidents would be fed and the necessary Civil Defence services would then be allocated to each incident depending on its severity.

ARP Control Room, Nottingham c.1940.

7 Comments

Liz Mardel

5/4/2022 23:27:12

I was interested to see if there was anything on the internet about Nottingham's wartime Control Room and the four 'Incident Officers' who took it in turn to spend the night on duty there. Your site claims that there's a photograph but all that appears is a photo of a frayed badge saying 'NOTTS'!
The other three Incident Officers had all been high-ranking officers in WW1 while my father was a sergeant (for a time a quatermaster sergeant!)
I can clearly remember him going off on duty one night in four before we went to sleep in the air-raid shelter. He was on duty on the night of 'Nottingham's blitz' and had to put a flag on his own factory when it got a direct hit. If he had not gone round that evening closing all the huge doors that the fire-watchers left open for ease of access, the whole factory would have been destroyed! As it was, it was the wing rented to a storage company. When I was young I thought 'How lucky'! Now I think of all the people who'd had to put all their belongings into storage for whatever reason and feel very differently!

Website owner

5/31/2022 20:02:55

Unfortunately, I named the two images the same and the original photo of the control room has been over written. I've looked through my folder of images but sadly cannot currently locate the original.

Liz Mardel

5/31/2022 22:59:56

Oh how sad! I never saw the Control Room all those years ago and thought I was going to have a glimpes at last! Never mind - these things happen!

Website owner

5/31/2022 23:28:15

Actually, I've tracked the image down. It is on Wikipedia.

Liz Mardel (formerly McMeeking)

5/4/2022 23:36:11

I omitted to mention my late father's name in the message I've just posted - he was J G McMeeking (later CBE., JP.)

I see that there have been no other messages on this site - so perhps I'm just posting something into thin air with nothing at the other end! Hey ho!!

Website owner

5/31/2022 23:29:29

Image has now been corrected.

Liz Mardel (ex McMeeking) link

11/1/2024 19:45:37

Many thanks for pointing me to Wikipedia. How interesting to see where my father had spent one night in four during the war!

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ARP Control Room, Nottingham c.1940

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