These invaluable maps were made by the London County Council immediately after the Second World War. It became the basis for the Abercrombie Plan for the Rebuilding of London.

Coloured areas show the widespread bomb damage while the different colours indicate its severity. Some houses were repaired; others patched up temporarily. Even those houses not bombed, deteriorated because there could be little maintenance during the war and were in need of care an attention.

If you visit the London Metropolitan Archives in Clerkenwell and look at the top left hand corner of Map 60 you will see what happened to the houses around Westbourne Square which the Booth Poverty map indicated were defined as being lived in by the ‘Upper-middle and Upper classes, Wealthy’. They suffered a direct hit by a V1 flying bomb – one of the most terrifying weapons of the war. These terrifying weapons, nicknamed ‘doodlebugs’ were unmanned planes set to fly a pre-determined number of miles, before the engine switched itself off – this led to an ominous silence as the rocket with its payload of a ton of explosive fell to earth. Almost 2500 of these weapons would reach London in 1944, killing 6184 people and almost 18,000 seriously injured.

The  V1 caused blast damage over a wide area. It exploded on the surface, and a huge blast wave rippled out from the epicentre. As it did so it left a vacuum, which caused a second rush of air as the vacuum was filled. This caused a devastating pushing and pulling effect. At the impact site houses or buildings were totally
demolished. In inner London suburbs where terrace houses were
packed together, sometimes up to 20 houses would totally collapse. Brick walls were pulverised into small fragments.

The blast in Westbourne in 1944 all but destroyed the Westbourne Square as indicated by the colour-coding of the bomb map – black meaning ‘total destruction’, purple meaning ‘damaged beyond repair’ and dark red meaning ‘doubtful if repairable’.

The bomb damage maps were vitally important in deciding where to put new blocks and even new estates in the rebuilding of London that took place after the war.