By Mary Norris
On the afternoon of Wednesday 10th February 1943 a lone bomber dropped a stick of bombs in Hurstpierpoint damaging around 100 houses, of which fourteen were evacuated overnight. 22 people spent the night away from home but with typical resilience returned home the following day and began clearing up.
Sadly, there was one fatality; Heather Christine Lamb, the four-year-old daughter of the Free Church minister, died from her injuries. She is buried in the South Avenue Cemetery in plot F64. Much has been speculated about the reason for this apparently isolated raid, both at the time and since, and until relatively recently not much was known about it.
Following the earlier London Blitz, during 1942 the German Luftwaffe targeted historic cities in retaliation for the increased effectiveness of the attacks by the RAF on German cities. This became known as the Baedeker Blitz. While it was not considered a success, attacks on more strategic targets continued, plus minor attacks on ever more isolated targets particularly in the South East. Translated German documents show that these later ‘nuisance’ raids were a deliberate policy intended to cause confusion and undermine British morale. Lewes was hit on 20th January, Battle on 2nd February, Crawley on 4th February and Bognor on 5th February. While many of these later ‘tip and run’ raids were coordinated they appear as apparently lone bombers operating at low level on so called soft targets. The raid on 10th February had penetrated as far inland as Newbury before turning South. Two planes from the flight were shot down, one near Tangmere and another at Saltdean. A third attacked Midhurst, where three civilian evacuees were killed, and a fourth attacked Hurst. From the trajectory of the flight, it would seem that the pilot was aiming for the gasometer which then stood in Western Road. Fortunately, he missed and the bombs fell between Cuckfield Road and Western Road at the rear of the Chinese Gardens.
The photograph, which was taken by my uncle, who was home on sick leave from the RAF at the time, shows what appears to be an unexploded bomb in the foreground and some of the damage to the houses in Cuckfield road. My grandparents lived at number 79, on the left of the photo and Heather lived at number 73, the detached house on the right. My husband, who was walking south of Tott Farm with his nursery school at the time, well remembers hearing the thud as the bombs exploded and on returning home to Eastrees, 117 Cuckfield Road, seeing the large patches of missing ceiling plaster in the living room.