Restored air raid shelter hosts West Bridgford school children to celebrate VE Day anniversary

A restored air raid shelter in West Bridgford has welcomed local school children as part of a project to celebrate VE Day.

The Abbey Circus Air Raid Shelter reopened in February after decades of being left abandoned following a £60,000 grant from the Government’s UK shared prosperity fund, matched with funding from Nottingham Trent University and Rushcliffe Borough Council.

Now back to its former glory, the shelter has welcomed in local schoolchildren on the 80th Anniversary of VE Day (May 8) to teach them about life during World War II and what it was like having to live under the risk of bombing.

Councillor Jonathon Wheeler, from Rushcliffe Borough Council, also visited the bunker on the special occasion and reiterated the importance of preserving the area’s history and teaching its younger generation about the past.

“As the years go by and more and more people unfortunately pass away in all the wars, it’s really important to make sure that children remember the horrors of the World War to make them understand why we can’t let it happen again,” he said.

“Having something like this where every child can walk around and actually see the history of it and feel it rather than just learning about it on paper, it brings it to life for them and hopefully hits home in terms of the reality of war.”

New creative content was created for the project by students from the Nottingham School of Art & Design at NTU, including new signage, an activity leaflet and a short film that was played on a projector inside the shelter.

A choir group from Rosewell Spencer Academy in West Bridgford were also given the opportunity to perform a number of wartime songs inside the bunker, alongside learning about its history.

Construction on the shelter began in 1939 and was completed the following year as part of detailed air-raid precautions in West Bridgford.

One of 11 shelters commissioned to be built on council land in the area, its importance was evident during the Nottingham Blitz in 1941 – a Nazi bombing raid which saw significant damage and casualties across the area. 

Professor Chris Reynolds, professor of Contemporary European History and Memory Studies at NTU, spoke to NottsTV in February about the project’s importance.

“Projects like this demonstrate the importance of subjects like history and humanities,” he said.

“Let anybody say history doesn’t matter, come and tell that to any of the children that have been in the shelter today that history doesn’t matter.”