It’s nearly seventy five years since German bombers attacked Manchester and memories of the event are fading with only children of the time still being around to remember.
Imperial War Museum North is putting that right in an exhibition opening this weekend aimed at this generation’s children and About Manchester went to take a look.
Around halfway into the exhibition there is a ceramic doll, six inches high, dark skinned.It belonged to eight year old Audrey Potter who lived with her family in Burnage when on the night of the 22nd December 1940 a bomb landed killing her mother, sister and brother.
Her father survived but the family home and all its possessions perished along with the Xmas presents.
Two days later, Xmas Eve, she was given the doll by a neighbour.
She kept it on her mantle piece for sevent four years, she died at the age of eighty two last October and the museum was given the doll by her two of her close friends.
This is Horrible Histories, making the past fun but also informative and today’s kids will,if they visit the exhibition get a real taste of what life was like when everyday you faced the dangers of German bombing.
It tells the story in words, pictures, objects and sounds from Chamberlain retiring from Munich (it has the flag that flew from the plane thru to Churchill’s victory speach in 1945.
A whistle stop tour of air raid shelters, the blackout and ARP wardens, the joys of rationing, Woolton pie, hedgehogs and pigs trotters, the blackout, which actually killed more people for a time than the air raids themselves, happy evacuation stories and sad ones.
The first-hand accounts of evacuated children separated from their parents for the first time and the stories of ordinary people who stayed in the cities under the constant threat to reveal the resilience and inventiveness of the Blitz spirit.
There are many powerful stories, from throughout the north of England and beyond, the exhibition displays items revealing the experiences of the Home Guard in Manchester, evacuees in Lancashire and Yorkshire, an heroic dog from Liverpool, a torch found by medics in the Houses of Parliament on the night they were bombed, and a previously unseen target map showing locations the Nazis wanted to destroy across Salford’S docks and the very spot where the museum now stands.
Immerse yourself in the horrible home front as you stumble through a blackout, climb under the kitchen table Morrison shelter and step outside the 1940s house to milk a cow like an evacuee. Pick up a survival guide and begin your journey through the Blitz. How steady is your hand, can you defuse the bomb in time? Cover your ears and hold your nose as you peak into a 1940s toilet and sniff your way through stinky smells, from pig bins to ration stew. Then create your own rotten recipes from wartime ingredients.
Discover what job you would have been given in wartime Britain. Take our test to discover how squeamish you are, then take the plunge as you step into the uniforms – from the ARP Warden to the Women’s Land Army.
Horrible Histories®: Blitzed Brits
IWM North Special Exhibitions Gallery
11 July 2015 – Spring 2016
Free Entry; iwm.org.uk; @IWMNorth
RELATED EVENTS AND ACTIVITIES FOR FAMILIES:
Horrible Histories® Illustration Workshop
Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 July
11am-12.30pm (Suitable for age 8-14 Years)
Want to learn how to bring illustrated characters to life? Join in with a free workshop led by artist Warren Osborne, who will teach some of the skills he used to while working on IWM North’s new special exhibition, Horrible Histories®: Blitzed Brits. Please note places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. #BlitzedBrits See iwm.org.uk for more details
Home Front Heroes
Free activities daily between Wednesday 22 July – Monday 31 August (all ages)
Explore new special exhibition Horrible Histories: Blitzed Brits and step into the 1940s this summer at IWM North. Discover real stories of bravery about people on the home front who set out to protect their communities, as Britain’s cities were attacked from the skies during the Blitz. See objects from IWM’s collections that belonged to Air Raid Wardens and fire officers and make your own puppet based on one of our home front heroes in daily craft activities. Meet characters Dotty, a 10 year-old girl whose mum is an Air Raid Warden and Billy, a young lad evacuated to the countryside in interactive storytelling sessions #BlitzedBrits. See iwm.org.uk for more details.
