Blitz: The Bombs That Changed Britain
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- Episode
- Ep4 - St Peter’s Church
- Broadcast Info
- 2017 (59 mins)
- Description
- This final episode looks at the deadly impact of the incendiary bomb when an incendiary sets fire to St Peter’s Church in the historic heart of Bristol. Before November 1940 the Castle Street area was full of shops, businesses and homes all served by St Peter’s; however on the night of Sunday 24th November, 1940 the German bomber aircraft came.
That evening Geoffrey Serle and his father had been attending church when the raid began, and almost 80 years later he recounts the terror and their desperate attempt to find shelter amongst the chaos. Bill Hares was also a tobacconist in nearby Merchant Street and, the film explores his carefully preserved his account of that November night when Bristol’s firefighters simply couldn’t cope.
Bev Reynolds also tells his father’s story; he was a police driver who tried to help the firefighting effort. Following the bomb, Castle Street’s residents and workers took in the dreadful damage the Luftwaffe had done. One local photo journalist stepped in to take pictures of the devastation, telling a human story of the bombs that many at the time would never see thanks to government censorship.
As historian Dr Lucy Noakes explains, this was recorded by mass observation agents who visited Bristol’s bombed out streets. Residents were reeling from the loss of their historic centre but some were determined to fight back by taking on the weapon that had destroyed St Peter’s Church. Volunteer firefighters stepped up including twenty three year-old Eric Tyley, who here remembers his role as firewatcher. Stationed on the church roof during a dreadful raid in December, he and others extinguished individual incendiary bombs before they could cause significant damage. As the raids continued, Bristol became a city of firefighters. By April 1941 the city’s emergency services had learned harsh lessons and the city’s co-ordination of police, fire and rescue services was held up as a model of excellence to the rest of the country.
Today, St Peters stands as a reminder of what Bristol lost during the blitz, and at St Mary Redcliffe, residents congregate to remember what was saved when the city fought back. - Genre
- History; Technology; Social Science; Psychology
How to cite this record
The Open University, "Blitz: The Bombs That Changed Britain". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/228982 (Accessed 24 Nov 2025)