Anderson Shelter

[southside]

Out walking i came across this Anderson Shelter on a local Sheffield allotment being used for storing gardening bits & pieces and wondered if there were many more still knocking about?

 

[John Russell]

If that's an Anderson shelter, rather than a curved sheet of corrugated sheeting, then it was never installed. A proper Anderson shelter is buried in the ground and covered over with soil, so it's just a mound. It's the soil that protects the occupants from flying debris and shrapnel, rather than the sheeting—which is there to stop the soil from caving in.

[neddy]

Anderson shelters were thicker steel than modern sheeting.

[Ponytail]

It appears they had to be returned and signed for 1947

[Lysanderix]

John Russel, what you say might be the official view… but in the early 1950s I helped my Grandad take down the Anderson shelter in his back garden .and whilst it was erected over partially excavated land there was no soil covering it at all. There were a couple of temporary beds there and little else. I don’t think it was ever used since a large public shelter was in existence at the top of the road.

The steel sheeting was certainly of a heavier gauge than modern commercially available sheeting and was heavily galvanised..

 

[ManoutotCity]

I remember what  appeared to be new ones  erected on prefab housing plots  (certainly on the Mansfield Drive, Intake ) as ‘above ground garden/ fuel  sheds’…..if memory serves me well ….it’s a long time ago. I believe that they were placed on a few courses of brick and looked very well made and strong…. The gauge of the ‘wriggly tin’ particularly impressed me …as Lysanderix suggests above. The big bolts used to fasten the sections together were also very substantial I well recall. They werent bright metal but were painted mid-dark green if I remember rightly. Finished off with stout wooden doors. I think they were just ploughed in when the prefabs  were replaced by the present, conventional housing  in the 70s which is a shame as I’m sure they could have been dismantled to serve as excellent sheds, elsewhere.