When you are next at High Leigh, take a look at the windows in the Woodlands Lounge. You will see that some still have marks on them from the tape used to protect against bomb blasts in the Second World War. The windows remained in one piece throughout the war but that could have been a different story if one stray bomb had exploded 82 years ago.
In the early hours of a Saturday morning in 1940 following an air raid, High Leigh staff woke to the sight of a 1000lb unexploded bomb on the lawn at the front of the house. It had lay there undiscovered until 9:30am having been mistaken for the garden roller. It wasn’t until the staff noticed a parachute caught in the nearby tree that they realised that it was in fact a bomb dropped the previous night in a raid.
The staff immediately alerted the manager who notified the police, they ordered an immediate evacuation of the house, and all householders within a mile radius were ordered to open all windows and doors until the bomb disposal unit had removed the detonator.
The staff were informed that there was no danger of it exploding until another bomb came down near it or on it! It lay there for some weeks undisturbed and was eventually removed.
We are grateful to Mrs Janet Parrington (formerly Globe), who was a 22-year-old housemaid and waitress at High Leigh during the 1940’s, who brought the photograph with her when she returned to High Leigh to celebrate her 80th birthday with her daughter on the 22nd August 1998.
