A public air-raid shelter, in the basement of the Electricity Showrooms on St Peter’s Street, was in preparation by the start of September 1939 and was approved in early January. The showroom was in an old rounded-ended building known as the ‘Corner House’, beyond the end of the surviving buildings on the south side of St Peter’s Street, at the corner with St Peter’s Place. This basement shelter was intended to hold seventy persons; in the event, however, space seems only to have been found for fifty. It would have been well placed for the old Bus Station at this end of St Peter’s Street. This shelter was in use until at least around 1943. The showroom building was demolished during the 1960s in connection with a proposed (but unexecuted?) enlargement of St Peter’s Place. There is a good chance something of the basement would survive archaeologically.
Owner : Public
Publicly accessible : Yes
How accessed for survey :
Tourism Potential :
Condition : Destroyed
Date of visit :

Canterbury City Council Emergency Committee, 01/01/39, Canterbury City Council Emergency Committee Minute Books 1 to 6 (Unpublished document). SKE14882.

Canterbury City Council Emergency Committee, 01/01/39, Canterbury City Council Emergency Committee Minute Books 1 to 6 (Unpublished document). Ske14882.

Simon Williamson, 01/01/39, Chief Air-Raid Warden’s notebook (Unpublished document). SKE14883.

Simon Williamson, 01/01/39, Chief Air-Raid Warden’s notebook (Unpublished document). Ske14883.