Greetings one and all and welcome to another beautiful spring day here in London Town. As you know, on Sunday we left off here at London Bridge Station and today, we'll be pressing into deepest Bermondsey. London Bridge Station dates from 1836, making it the oldest of our London

terminals. It was rebuilt twice in the Victorian era to accommodate additional services but as we have already learned, it was heavily bombed during the Blitz on multiple occasions and we shall further examine this today. The station was rebuilt in the early 1970s but much of..

this work was cosmetic and merely papered over the cracks left by the Luftwaffe. The massive reconstruction undertaken recently has transformed the station into one of the most modern on the network. Compare the modern station with this aerial early post-war image

We'll set along St Thomas Street and as we walk can discuss the parachute mine that fell here on 12 December 1940. As these were adapted anti-shipping mines, these were dealt with by Royal Navy teams and on this occasion, they were able to make the mine safe. Whilst they were at

work, spare a thought for the two signalmen who remained at their posts throughout. Such is the scale of the recent rebuild to the station, many of the wartime scars previously visible have been lost but if one examines the brickwork further along St Thomas St., one can still see

the occasional pockmarks. We now bear left into Crucifix Lane and cross beneath the railway, emerging into Druid Street, where we immediately enter the churchyard, of the former church of St John, Horsleydown, now the London City Mission, which stands on the foundations of the..

former church, which was built in 1732 to the design of Nicholas Hawksmoor and John James. Sadly, the church was pretty much destroyed by bombs by October 1940 and today all that remains apart from the footprint, is a sad looking Great War memorial in the church garden.

We exit the churchyard into Tower Bridge Road and almost immediately, we see a small plaque commemorating the birthplace of Thomas Guy, the founder of Guy's Hospital, which we saw on Sunday. We cross the road and turn left to regain the line of Druid Street and will pause at the

St John's Estate, a large council development on Druid Street, which in common with many estates in this immediate area, still shows evidence of the air raid shelters constructed here for the residents, Shelters were built beneath each of the blocks, each of which could provide

accommodation for up to 300 people. There were three such shelters on this site and the signage can still be seen, albeit somewhat faded to this day. We continue along Druid Street to the junction with Tanner Street, where another grim reminder of the Blitz can be viewed.

On the railway bridge abutment opposite, we can see a blue plaque, commemorating the 77 people who lost their lives here on 25 October 1940. On this occasion, the arch was being used as for sports and games rather than as a conventional shelter but as with Stainer Street that we

saw on Sunday, these arches provided scant protection against high explosive bombs and on the night in question, a bomb crashed through the arch killing many of those using the facilities here. We now bear left into Tanner Street and walk down to Jamaica Road, where we bear right

We are now walking adjacent to the Thames and as we continue along Jamaica Road, we see St Saviours Dock, which despite the name, is not actually a dock, rather than an inlet of the river which was once a maze of towering warehouses, which are now apartments. We continue a short

distance to Dockhead, where we pause outside Holy Trinity Church, a post-war building which marks the site of a great tragedy and great heroism. On 2 March 1945, a V-2 rocket smashed into the church that formerly stood on this site, creating a scene of utter destruction and as..

well as destroying the church, also obliterated the Priests' House, killing three of the four priests inside - Fathers Spillane, McCarthy and O'Riordan - instantly. Another priest, Father Edmund Arbuthnot and the housekeeper, Bridget Slavin were missing, presumed killed. Despite

the fact that they were almost certainly dead, a local member of the Rescue Squad, Ted Heming, who was a milkman in normal life, volunteered to go into the ruins to try and find them. Heming soon heard voice, which turned out to be Father Arbuthnot, trapped and badly injured..