The experience of children in Britain – forced to interact with the adult realities of the Second World War (September 1939 -September 1945) – is a largely untold story.Read more
Posts tagged: #Home Front
Home from the war: what happened to disabled First World War veterans
Around 2 million soldiers, sailors and airmen came home with some level of disability: over 40,000 were amputees; some had facial disfigurement or had been blinded.Read more
An introduction to ‘Thankful Villages’
In the First World War every village saw young people leave to serve their country. Over 700,000 Britons died, yet 53 village communities suffered no fatalities.Read more
6 things you may not know about POWs in England during the First World War
Prisoners were interned in hundreds of locations across England, ranging from purpose-built camps holding thousands of men, to locations that held just a few individuals. Read more
Life behind the wire: rare images of Prisoner of War Camps
From the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, German prisoners of war (POWs) began arriving in England.Read more
The Chilwell catastrophe: Fatal explosion on the home front
One hundred years ago a catastrophic explosion tore through the National Shell Filling Factory at Chilwell, Nottinghamshire.Read more
7 Unusual War Memorials
The aftermath of the First World War saw a wave of public commemoration, sometimes in the form of quite unusual war memorials.Read more
The Silvertown Tragedy: Explosion on the Home Front
100 years ago today, on 19th January 1917 at 6.52pm, a catastrophic explosion at the Brunner Mond and Company’s high explosive TNT factory in Silvertown, East London killed 73 people and injured hundreds. Most were local residents, including children and babies. The force of the explosion was tremendous. Streets of houses were flattened. Across the river from Silvertown, on the Greenwich Peninsula at a gas works, now the site of the O2 Arena, one of the gas holders exploded. UpRead more
Documenting the Physical Legacy of the Home Front 1914 – 18
Today the Council for British Archaeology, English Heritage and many other national organisations are launching an online project, Home Front Legacy 1914 – 18, which turns us all into archaeologists. It could not be more exciting or important. We are seeking to record as many as possible of the thousands of First World War related sites in the UK. With the help of members of the public armed with their mobile phones, tablets or just a pencil and paper, weRead more