Due to its small playground and the density of housing in its environs, the staff and pupils of St Dunstan’s School on the south side of London Road (now converted to flats), were provided with shelters in a meadow behind premises on the north side of the street. This was a concrete-trench air-raid shelter intended to accommodate 207 scholars and staff. This sizeable, rectangular meadow was owned by Alfred Eric Burton, a dairyman living on the London Road, and was evidently used to graze dairy cattle. Fences were erected around the trench shelters to prevent livestock from falling in. The entrance to the site was through a yard belonging Jordan & Son, Coal Merchants, immediately opposite the school. From around 1940, like most school shelters, the trenches here were made available to the public outside school hours (confusingly, the Chief Air-Raid Warden referred to the site as ‘Barton’s’, rather than ‘Burton’s’ Meadow; there is a meadow of that name elsewhere in the City.) In mid December 1940 a notice was fixed at the entrance, offering: ‘entrance only for persons using the shelter, no dogs, stock must not be disturbed.’ Evidently the livestock had not been adequately protected, for the Emergency Committee now undertook to remake the entrance gates ‘so stock cannot open them and fall in’. Nevertheless, the shelters were still in use in mid June 1944. The meadow is now the site of Somner Close.
Owner : Unknown
Publicly accessible : Unknown
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Canterbury City Council Emergency Committee, 01/01/39, Canterbury City Council Emergency Committee Minute Books 1 to 6 (Unpublished document). SKE14945.

Canterbury City Council Emergency Committee, 01/01/39, Canterbury City Council Emergency Committee Minute Books 1 to 6 (Unpublished document). Ske14945.

Simon Williamson, 01/01/39, Chief Air-Raid Warden’s notebook (Unpublished document). SKE14944.

Simon Williamson, 01/01/39, Chief Air-Raid Warden’s notebook (Unpublished document). Ske14944.