A day at the library

 Sheffield Central Library is in a magnificent 1930s building and also hosts a small art gallery. I went along to see the new exhibition featuring a range of Sheffield artists, but was delighted to see there was also a special exhibition on the Sheffield Blitz.

Sheffield was a  major steel, munitions and arms production centre in WW2 and it is surprising it wasn't heavily bombed more often, but it was a long way north. The Germans mounted two very heavy raids in late 1940, which collectively became known as the 'Sheffield Blitz'.

The local ARP issued some helpful guidance on the best places to take cover in buildings (not the upper floors!).

One of the iconic images of the raids, trams on fire in the city centre.

A short translation of the executive summary of one of the Luftwaffe planning documents. Not sure I'd fancy being the three planes attacking Southampton on their own as a diversion.

Force allocations for the raid, with aircraft from each bomber squadron allocated to various targets. The subsidiary raids are generally single aircraft. The main effort involves several hundred planes, albeit not carrying anything like the bombloads of later RAF and USAAF raids.

The bomb plot after the two heaviest raids. On the first raid the steel works were largely shrouded by fog so the southwestern (residential) areas of the city were targetted instead. The east end was hit more heavily on the second raid.

Steel production was largely unaffected, it is very hard to destroy steel works  unless repeated heavy raids are mounted, but nearly half the buildings in the city were completely destroyed or heavily damaged, so the raids were very damaging. Our road was hit twice, once down from our current house where there is a gap in the Victorian buildings and the other at the top of the road, and whole area was fairly heavily plastered. You can actually see where a lot of the bomb sticks came down on the ground by the lines of postwar buildings. 

More raids were mounted during the war, but nothing as heavy, and the decoys and defences were much stronger then. The decoy site up in the hills to the southwest has an impressive number of bomb craters still visible around it, so at least it decoyed some of the bombers.

On to the art exhibition, a few of the more warry ones first.

Muirhead Bone was an official war artist in WW2, and this sketch is 'Minelayers Returning to the Kyle of Lochalsh' made at an unknown date in WW2. 

This one is 'Repairing the Guildhall, London'

Richard Seddon was another Sheffield war artist. This is 'Lorraine Outpost', and looking at the uniforms and MG positions, seems to have been painted in late 1939 or early 1940. Those MG pits look terribly exposed to air observation. Seddon was part of the Camouflage Unit, tasked with developing camouflage schemes for equipment and installations.

Richard Bone was another Sheffield artist and member of the Camouflage Unit. This is a pastel sketch 'Lyngen Fjord, Houses and Barns destroyed by Germans, Norway' made in 1945. 

Richard Bone also painted this study of the steel works in the east end of Sheffield in 1945, clearly churning away at top speed. Nice to see the old Tinsley water towers still there, they were demolished some years ago and are where the M1 viaduct at Tinsley is now. Ground zero for the Russian nuke in 'Threads'.

Some more modern stuff. 'Memories of Rain' by John Hoyland. That white blob is actually the painting, not a flash reflection.

A Bridget Riley, 'Persian Palace'

And 'Luxuria' by Phlegm. I really like Phlegm, reminds me of a mix of Clifford Harper and Nick Blinko. We unexpectedly came across one of his wall murals in a back street in Reykjavik last year. 

'Refugees' by Josefina de Vasconcellos. As relevant today as it was in 1949.

Grayson Perry's wonderful 'Comfort Blanket'. So huge I had trouble photographing the entire thing.

That was a good day out, and if you are passing the Graves Art Gallery in the Central Library in the next few months, I'd recommend a visit.