Good Day and welcome to what is frankly a slightly ropey day here in London town. Today, I thought that we'd take a look at the work of the ARP Wardens here and perhaps also explore some of the evidence they left behind them. Today, our view of the Air Raid Wardens is perhaps..

coloured to some extent coloured by the figure of Chief Warden Bert Hodges of Dad's Army, brilliantly portrayed by Bill Pertwee. Hodges is often the nemesis of Capt. Mainwaring and seems to delight in shouting "Put that light out" at all and sundry. Like Mainwaring, Hodges enjoys

the war and his new found importance as a big fish in the small pond that is Walmington-on-Sea. Perhaps because the writers of Dad's Army were both growing up in WW2 Britain, they echoed the feelings of many members of the public towards the real-life wardens, especially during..

the so-called "Phoney War" period at the beginning of the war, when to the civilians at least, not much seemed to be happening. People resented being ordered to enforce the blackout by the wardens, many of whom like Hodges, enjoyed their new roles perhaps a little too much. The..

Wardens' Service was founded in 1937 as part of the rapid expansion of the Civil Defence Service - at that time known as ARP, or Air Raid Precautions - which included the Auxiliary Fire Service, Rescue Service and of course Air Raid Wardens. By the outbreak of war, some 800,000..

had been recruited. the vast majority of whom were "expenses only" volunteers. The relatively few paid wardens were paid £3/5 shillings a week for the men (£2 a week for women) and most of the full-time paid wardens were those in more senior positions within the service. About..

one in every six wardens were female and as you can see from this photo, many of the male wardens had "done their bit" during the Great War and sometimes in even earlier conflicts and proudly wore their medal ribbons on their uniforms, once these were issued. To start with, the

wardens wore their civilian clothes, with an "ARP" armband and a steel helmet emblazoned with the letter "W" (for Warden) fore and aft. These helmets were colour coded to allow easy identification in the blackout. Ordinary wardens wore a black helmet as below, whilst the more...

senior positions wore white helmets, as worn by Bert Hodges - in his case with two vertical stripes to denote a Chief Warden. There were other colours deployed - for example a warden trained in poison gas decontamination was entitled to wear an orange helmet, although personally

I have yet to see one of these "in the flesh". For communication, a police-type whistle was carried and the example seen below comes from my own collection. A lapel badge was also worn-these were originally made from sterling silver but later, with Wardens reaching a peak...

numerically of 1.5 million by mid-1940, these were superseded by polished stainless steel. Uniforms began to be issued in late 1939, at first a one piece overall type of affair made from a material known as "bluette" but from 1941 replaced by a blue battledress-type uniform. Also

from 1941, the term "ARP" was dropped in favour of "Civil Defence" but many people continued to refer to them as ARP Wardens after this time. The service, like the whole of the Civil Defence was organised very much on a municipal basis, under the control of local authorities and

as we can see from the organisation chart below, the country was divided into twelve Civil Defence regions, with London being a region in its own right. London was further sub-divided into thirteen groups of neighbouring local authorities and placed under the control of one of..

them. Each local authority was responsible for the organisation of its own ARP/Civil Defence Service and wardens (as well as firefighters) were therefore almost always local people who knew their areas well. As can be seen from this chain of command, the Civil Defence involved..

many disciplines, all of whom ultimately reported to the Civil Defence Controller (usually the Chief Executive) of the local authority concerned. Overall control rested with a Civil Defence Commissioner, in London Sir Ernest Gowers and his deputy, Admiral Sir Edward Evans, who..

was the London Regional Commissioner. Each borough had a network of Wardens's Posts, often in the shape of these structures, from which the network of wardens would patrol a given "patch". Wardens would patrol in pairs and in quieter times would mainly be on the lookout for...

infringements of the blackout. If a householder or business owner had forgotten to put up the blackout at the correct time, or had done so carelessly and was showing a light, then a knock on the door would ensue and offenders would be told in no uncertain terms to put the light..

out or to cover the window properly. Persistent offenders would be fined, or could even be sent to prison in extreme cases but most of the time, a firm word would suffice. It was cases such as this during the "Phoney War" period that gave wardens a bad name with some members of..

the public and the comedian Bud Flanagan capitalised on this with a long-running gag that told us the ARP shouldn't stand for Air Raid Precautions but instead for 'Anging 'Round Pubs, as this was what they always seemed to be doing! This perception of the wardens changed however

with the onset of the Blitz. Instead of patrolling on the lookout for infringements of the Blackout, the wardens patrols continued during air raids. Now though, they would act as control officers for individual incidents and would co-ordinate the response required for any given

incident and would often involve themselves in efforts to rescue those trapped, as we have heard on a previous walk with the case of Warden Stanley Barlow in St Marylebone, who rescued occupants of the Great Synagogue in Great Portland Street and was awarded the George Medal for

his efforts. During WW2, some 7,000 wardens were killed whilst performing their duties, many of whom are commemorated on various local memorials across the capital (Ewer Street photo with thanks). It is probably fair to say that the wardens were never as "loved" as were the men..

and women of the fire service but by the end of the Blitz, the 'Anging 'Round Pubs image had been put to bed and the many male and female volunteers were regonised and respected for their efforts in defending the local communities and few would begrudge them the occasional game..

of darts or a meeting with the Queen in order to collect a well-deserved award for services rendered. As far as evidence that remains of the wardens today, it is still there is you look for it. This is mainly in the form of surviving wardens posts that can be found in various...

parts of the capital. Luckily enough, there is a Wardens' Post just up the road from me in Blackheath. This is the former "Park 20" Post of the Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich but as well as this post, there are other Wardens' Posts to be found in Blackfen, as we can see in..

this picture of the post in Wellington Avenue. Other examples can be found a little further out in suburban Surrey, where two are located in Wallington as we'll see in the next tweet.

The first example is at Woodcote Green, whilst the second is at Mellows Park and as can be seen, both appear substantially intact. Still just south of the Thames is another just outside Barnes Railway Station, which can be seen in the second two photos lurking in the undergrowth.

South of the Thames doesn't have a complete monopoly on these structures however, as I am aware of at least one north of the river, in Alexandra Park Road which is a semi-underground structure. All of these posts serve to remind us of the important work done by a very brave group

of men and women. That brings us to the end of today's little jaunt. I've really enjoyed doing these virtual walks over the past fifteen weeks but I think that they have probably now run their course, especially as we appear to returning to some sort of normality, at least as far

as most things being "open" again. I'll still be tweeting about wartime London and will do the odd thread such as these but until the next lockdown, I think its going to be goodbye to the virtual walks. Hopefully though, it won't be too long before we can start doing them for..

real again, starting with a select band of twitteratoids amongst you - we'll liaise about this privately. In the meantime, thanks for all of your support and kind words and we'll meet up soon!