The Marples

[Sheffield History]

MARPLES HOTEL - THURSDAY DECEMBER 12th 1940

Standing on the corner of Fitzalan Square and High Street, the site was occupied during the 1870s by the Wine and Spirit Commercial Hotel. By the late 1880s it was known as Market Street Wine Vaults. The owner was a John Marples, and the licence held in the name of Edward Marples. Despite a further change of name to the London Mart, regulars always referred to the pub as Marple's. It's official name was still the London Mart in 1940. The building itself was seven stories high comprising of guests bedrooms, concert rooms, bars and lounges with a network of cellars - it was thought of as a solid and safe building. The photograph taken below shows Marples on the right with a local firm of nurserymen next door in the three storey building.

The first warning of the raid came at seven o'clock on a cold and clear winter's evening and as the night wore on the intensity of the raid grew especially in the city centre area. At 10.50 p.m. C&A Modes department store which lay opposite the Marples on High Street received a direct hit. Flying debris from the explosion crashed into the Marples pub injuring a number of customers who were taken down into the cellars to receive attention for their injuries. At 11.44 p.m. fifty four minutes after the explosion at C & A's, a German high explosive bomb completely demolished the building. William Reading a Corporation Inspector who was in the nearby Fitzalan Square transport offices at the time recalls

"When I rushed outside I saw that the Marples building had been hit, the building had collapsed and where it had stood was a heap of rubble fifteen high"

It was thought that no-one would have survived the explosion but nevertheless rescue work commenced the following day at 10.00 a.m. Miraculously over the next few hours seven men were pulled alive from the wreckage. Two of them actually walked away unaided from the scene and were never heard of again. Of the other five who were pulled out, only one Edward Riley age 36 of Ecclesall Road, was from the Sheffield area. The other four were

1. John Watson Kay age 46, Boma Road, Trentham, Stoke on Trent respectively.

2. William Wallace King, Arbett Parade, Bristol

3. Lionel George Ball, Knowle West, Bristol

4. Ebenezer Tall age 42, Clarissa Street, Shoreditch, London

"They told vivid stories of how they spent the night trapped in the cellars. How they could hardly breathe for smoke and dust...how they dug with their hands to make an air vent - how they dozed, weary and light-headed from the loss of blood."

Mary Walton in her book " Raiders over Sheffield" ascribed the tragic loss of life to the fact that the roofs of the cellars in the London Mart were not strengthened. The people who survived the explosion were said to have been in the smaller bottling cellar that had a stronger ceiling.

Given the buildings size and structure the staff at the pub thought that it would be able to withstand significant bomb damage. A case of complacency? Possibly but I think the more likely cause is the size and impact point of the bomb on the pub which caused the building to fall in on itself.

We can never know for certain how many people died in the explosion that devastated Marples. Over the following weeks 64 bodies were recovered from the rubble and the partial remains of six or seven other people were also identified. The force of the explosion and the ensuing collapse of the building meant that only 14 people could be visually identified : the remainder were identified through their personal belongings that had with them when they died.

The most accurate estimate is that 77 people were in Marples at the time of the explosion and 70 died as a result of the injuries they received. It was without doubt the worst single incident for loss of life in Sheffield during the whole war.

The clearance of the site took many weeks. It was estimated that over one thousand tons of rubble had to be removed from the site before it was cleared. The site lay derelict for 19 years.

Above is a photograph that was taken in 1950 that still shows the damage that occurred ten years earlier. The cleared area to the left of the gutted building is where the Marples once stood

At the end of the decade, a full nineteen years after it was destroyed a new public house was built by John Smith's Ltd. It re-opened in 1959 and was for the first time officially known as Marples. The pub traded right up until the early summer of 2002 when it was suddenly closed. It was thought the pub was undergoing the usual periodic refit but it tuned out that the pub was closed for good. It remained empty until the early part of 2003 when it re-opened as "Hein Gericke" motor cycle accessories shop. The floors above the shop are believe or not occupied by student flats

The above photo was taken in 1940 and shows the Marples pub just a few months prior to its destruction. On the opposite side of the road is C & A Modes department store which received a direct hit on that Thursday evening. The buildings further up High Street were to suffer major bomb damage that night.

Information above taken from the following excellent website - http://www.chrishobbs.com/marples1940.htm

[mickjj]

The Marples the day after the blitz

[Guest tsavo]

Great read, Mickjj.

Although the shot of clearing the rubble is not of at a high enough resolution to show it, the lorry belonged to my great uncle, Robert Taylor. I have seen a full resolution shot on which you can read the name on the cab door.

[Sheffield History]

I tried blowing the picture up and digitally enhancing it but no look - it's just not high res enough

[Guest tsavo]

Thanks for trying. May still have it on my other computer in the UK. Will be bringing that back with me in August. Lots of stuff on there which I hope to use.

[mickjj]

Another picture showing the aftermath of the Marples

[deejayone]

On that night, The Marples was only one of 9 pubs lost in the area.

The others being:

The Westminster - High Street

The Royal Oak - King Street

The Devonshire Arms - South Street, The Moor

The Shades Vaults - Watson's Walk.

The Three Horse Shoes - Norfolk Street (Jehu Street)

The Kings Head - 1 Change Alley.

The Angel - 15 Angel Street.

The Bodega - Market Place, High Street

Other pub buildings were hit too, including the Cossack which had it's roof and upstairs blown off (and has remained a single-storey building since), the Sheffield Free Brewery Co on Queens road suffered a hit but the bomb itself didn't detonate and Thomas Rawson's and Co Brewery on Pond Street was destroyed (the site was replaced as Sheffield Polytechnic, now Hallam University).

[deejayone]

[Guest tsavo]

The victims of the Marples tragedy were buried in a communal grave in the Garden of War, in City Road Cemetery.

[Hjdary]

A mate of mine told me his grand father was fireman an at the time the bomb hit, he was on the roof of the Marples trying to put out the fire at C&A with a large hose.

Also he had heard that some of the bodies where never recovered and instead some of the area was filled with lime and left.

[RichardB]

Thanks for trying. May still have it on my other computer in the UK. Will be bringing that back with me in August. Lots of stuff on there which I hope to use.

Send me a CD or DVD of your "stuff" :rolleyes:

[Guest plain talker]

I have already mentioned this eleewhere, but I thought it relevant to this thread.

There was much loss of life, in the hit that the Marples took, and (urban?) legend certainly has it that many of the bodies were not recovered from the flattened building, but just "limed". (I have to admit to feeling more than a little shudder when I went under the underpass beside the rebuilt marples building, as a teenager.)

My gran told the tale of passing the bombed out Marples, the next morning, as the recovery operation was under way. (such as they could do, considering the extensive battering Sheffield had taken in the raids, and the way the services were stretched as a result.)

She told me, that, as she passed the Marples' ruins, they brought a body out, on a stretcher; a young man, probably not that different in age than my gran (20 or 30 at most, she seemed to think.)

She described this young man as being so very handsome:- Blonde, with a beautiful physique, like an Adonis, she said. There was not one mark on him, that she could see; she surmised that he must have suffered internal trauma, causing his death, as was most often the case in an explosion.

She was harrrowed by this sight, and was still distressed by the memory, forty- odd years after, in relating the story to me, when she was an elderly woman. The poor chap... so young, so handsome, his life snuffed out in the bombing (like so many others) A horribly sad story.

[DaveH]

It was thought that no-one would have survived the explosion but nevertheless rescue work commenced the following day at 10.00 a.m. Miraculously over the next few hours seven men were pulled alive from the wreckage. Two of them actually walked away unaided from the scene and were never heard of again. Of the other five who were pulled out, only one Edward Riley age 36 of Ecclesall Road, was from the Sheffield area. The other four were

1. John Watson Kay age 46, Boma Road, Trentham, Stoke on Trent respectively.

2. William Wallace King, Arbett Parade, Bristol

3. Lionel George Ball, Knowle West, Bristol

4. Ebenezer Tall age 42, Clarissa Street, Shoreditch, London

"They told vivid stories of how they spent the night trapped in the cellars. How they could hardly breathe for smoke and dust...how they dug with their hands to make an air vent - how they dozed, weary and light-headed from the loss of blood."

After researching my family tree into my paternal grandmothers side of the family I have reason to believe that one of those two who "actually walked away unaided from the scene and were never heard of again" was a man called Edwin Wainwright (1891 - 1943) of Pomona Street, Sheffield. My great grandmothers younger brother.

Family story has it that he was in The Marples on the night of the bombing and was rescued from it alive and apparently uninjured. However, it appears that he never recovered from the mental trauma of the incident and commited suicide by hanging himself at home in 1943. A sad end after such a remarkable and lucky escape. Edwin was married and did have descendents, one of which, a grandson, I have made contact with through GenesReunited although he was unaware of the incident which had left him growing up without a grandfather. In the 1940's suicide, like being born out of wedlock or being in debt, carried a social stigma. Technically suicide is a criminal offence but how it is possible to bring a legal prosecution against someone who by virtue of their "crime" is already dead is beyond me.

[Guest BarDav]

A mate of mine told me his grand father was fireman an at the time the bomb hit, he was on the roof of the Marples trying to put out the fire at C&A with a large hose.

Also he had heard that some of the bodies where never recovered and instead some of the area was filled with lime and left.

Yes the lime story you quote I can remember my father, who was in the ARP in Rotherham and was helping with the rescue at time, was what he said had been done as they believed there were many more bodies buried in the cellars they were unable to reach due to the damage. If my memory serves me right I belive that an attempt was also made by miners from the Rotherham area pits to dig a tunnel from, I think it was the toilets across in Fitzallan Sq. to try and reach the people known to be trapped in the cellars but again damage prevented their efforts also.

[Guest galena]

My grandfather was the Richard William Redding referred to in the article, which was originally printed in 'Sheffield at War' published by the Sheffield Telegraph in 1948.

My mother was also one of the rescue team; unfortunately at the end of her life (she died n 2003 at the grand age of 98) the memory came back to haunt her as she frequently kept telling us that ' you can't go in there, there are only bodies behind the wall now'. It must have been etched on her memory.

Galena