Greetings virtual Blitz Walkers of the world. It's another gorgeous day in London but I trust that you're not tempted to venture out and are staying at home. We're standing outside Southwark Station and are going to head for a short distance along Union Street on the first leg..

After a short distance, on our right we see a 1960s pub called the 'Lord Nelson' at the junction with Nelson Square, we can take a short detour in here to compare photographs of the square 'then and now' as it seemed to attract more than it's share of attention from the Luftwaffe

In this series of photographs, we can see how Nelson Square looked in 1937, two photos from 1951 with lots of barren land and how it looks today, the often-seen mixture of original and 1960s architecture. Leaving this still quite tranquil spot, we resume our walk along Union St.

After walking beneath the railway arch, we turn left into Great Suffolk Street and as we walk along this street, we note the real mixture of architecture, a legacy from the Blitz, from 1950s and 60s industrial buildings and more modern redevelopments. We pause at the junction...

with Price's Street, Sumner Street and Southwark Street, where we can compare the wartime view in May 1941, that of 2009 and the view today and note the difference in architecture that reflects the changing fortunes of the area. It is also easy to forget that Bankside Power...

Station (now Tate Modern) in it's present form, did not exist during WW2, hence the absence of the distinctive chimney from the wartime view. We now turn right into Southwark Street, where we can again compare 'then and now' views, firstly at the junction with Lavington St.

As with the previous photo, the damage at Lavington Street was caused on the night of 10/11 May 1941 but despite the extensive damage, there were no casualties caused, which was also the case at 89 Southwark Street, which we see here ablaze on 11 May 1941 and more recently.

We now turn right into Great Guildford Street and again compare 'then and now' views. This was once the location of ARP Wardens' Post 5, in the crypt of a small chapel here but on the night of 29 Sept 1940, a direct hit killed 9 of the 10 wardens on duty here. The sole survivor..

was blown out of the door by the blast. Amongst those killed, were Albert and Thomas Cheeseman, two brothers along with their father, Henry and two other brothers, Fred and Thomas Darvell. A nearby street was named Wardens' Grove in their honour but it is a shabby dead-end, not..

really a fitting memorial. We continue beneath the railway and reach the junction where we meet Union Street once again and pause at the site of the former Jolly Gardeners' Pub, the scene of a particularly nasty V-1 incident on 19 June 1944, the scars of which can still be seen.

The pub was packed with customers, most of whom were in the cellar bar but shortly after 10pm, a V-1 came barrelling down, falling immediately outside the pub, which was obliterated. Those who weren't killed outright were trapped in the cellar but as if to seal their fate, water

from a broken main steadily filled the cellar and many more were drowned. In all, 47 people died here, who a few moments earlier had been enjoying a pint. The flats opposite also took much of the blast and today, the repairs to the brickwork can still be seen if one looks closely

We'll now continue along Union Street, passing yet another "Rose & Crown" that didn't attract the Luftwaffe's attention as we cross Southwark Bridge Road. As we continue along Union Street, we again note the real mixture of pre-war and subsequent architecture, a sure sign of the

area's wartime heritage. Shortly after we pass the former St Saviour's School on one side of the road and the particularly splendid Mint & Gospel Lighthouse Mission building on the other, we pause, turn around and compare views, which we shall see in the next tweet.

The wartime photo was taken on the morning of 11 May 1941 but despite the major damage caused, there were no serious casualties in this incident. If we turn and continue our journey, we can once again compare views from further along Union Street, again from the morning of 11 May

As we near the junction with Borough High Street, we can see the site of the former Topley's Cafe on our right and compare the view with that of the morning of 11 May 1941. Four people had been trapped in the rubble + others injured, but happily there were no fatal injuries here.

We now turn left into Borough High Street and although the plaque has been moved to Borough Station, we are reminded that beneath our feet, a disused tube line was once used as a massive shelter capable of accommodating some 14,000 people. As we pass the splendid St Saviour's

War Memorial, we turn right into St Thomas Street and pause outside the main entrance to Guy's Hospital, once the main receiving hospital for casualties from Bermondsey & Southwark. Guy's suffered great damage during the Blitz + repairs to the brickwork can still be seen clearly.

We cross the road now and head towards London Bridge Station, now finally fully rebuilt after operating for many years with patched-up war damage and which has some startling and sad stories of the Blitz, with which we shall end our walk for today.

We pause outside the Stainer Street entrance, now a pedestrian walkway but once a normal road and one which for me at least, always carried a real and unaccountable air of melacholy, which I noticed long before I became interested in our wartime history. These arches beneath the

station were a natural choice when it came to building makeshift air raid shelters but as so often in the early days of the war, little thought had been given to the sanitary arrangements and just how many people would use them. Take a look at this formal report, written by the..

Regional Officer for London Civil Defence Groups 4 & 8 in which he pulls no punches as to the appalling state of hygiene that he encountered during a visit made during an air raid. Hygiene wasn't the only problem, in today's parlance, "Health and Safety" was also a major issue.

The penultimate paragraph says it all "I am sure that I have never seen anything more entirely sickening than these public shelters and I would suggest the danger of the conditions under which they are operating getting into the hands of the more extreme sections of the press."

Although improvement works were undertaken, nothing could be done about the inherent danger of using these railway arches for shelter, as they were above ground and could easily be pierced by a bomb hitting the station above. Sadly, on the night of 17 February 1941, this is just

what happened. Although the steel blast doors at either end of the arch were closed, a bomb penetrated the arch roof and the blast sucked one of the steel doors off it's hinges, crushing many shelterers who had survived the initial blast. Some 68 were killed here and a further..

175 seriously injured. Today, a blue plaque in the walkway commemorates those who died and were injured and to me, this is still a place of great sadness. That concludes our walk for today. I'm taking a day off tomorrow but join me here on Tuesday, when we shall continue in the..

direction of Bermondsey. Enjoy your day and stay safe at home./END