‘Britain’s most patriotic’ council estate, has once again decorated its balconies and windows with fluttering England flags to support the national side at this year’s European Championship. It is a tradition that goes back to the Blitz, according to 85-year-old Peter Wisby.
Organising the display was not easy this year. The flags’ prices have risen from 33p to £3 due to the cost-of-living crisis meaning fewer flags are flying than usual. Soon after the war ended, residents on the same estate, living in the same flats, hosted a party in even more trying circumstances.
The below photo shows the estate nearly eighty years ago. It is widely believed to have been taken on VE Day, 1945. But Mr Wisby, born in January 1939, insists it was taken in the summer of 1946 when he was six years old. Regardless of the year’s difference, much of Bermondsey would have remained in ruins. Amidst the rubble, Kirby Estate residents organised a Kiddies Party to celebrate a year of peace. Mr Wisby who still lives locally, remembers it well.
“It was all about celebrating the end of the war and recognising the fact we were so badly bombed,” he says. The party was funded by the local dockers working on Rotherhithe’s harbour which Peter says employed “99 out of 100” adults. “All the mums and dads on the estate were around. We had trestles right down the way between the washing poles. It was fantastic,” he said.
The Kiddies Party would have been a bitter-sweet occasion for residents. While it was a celebration, the nation had barely started dragging itself up after the thumping trauma of war. Peter is glad its distinct national spirit lives on today. “I don’t know why but the Kirby has always been patriotic,” he said.
The Kirby Estate was built shortly before WW2 between 1937 and 1938 – part of a drive to provide families with safe, dry housing. Constructed on the site of terraced housing, it was a godsend for people who’d grown used to ramshackle conditions. Peter, born in Flat 39, believes he was the estate’s first newborn. His first son would be born in that same flat 25 years later. Peter says his childhood was filled with memories of a happy community teeming with “40 or 50” playful youngsters.
But there were hard times too. In 1927, local MP, doctor and philanthropist Dr Alfred Salter foretold the coming of another world war with bleak premonitions of “smashed buildings, wrecked factories, devastated houses, mangled corpses and bodies of helpless men”. With Hitler’s rise to power and the beginning of the Blitz in September 1940, such stark images were realised.
“I remember the bombing,” Peter says. “At that age, you wonder what on Earth is going on. To this day I can see the flashes from the window.” While hop-picking in Kent one summer, Peter vividly remembers a Dornier bomber going down.
Peter stayed on the Kirby with his mum throughout the German bombing campaign. Once the war was over, he and his friends were reunited on the estate. They enjoyed playing amongst the surrounding rubble despite their parents’ protests, forgetting that unexploded bombs might lay just below the ground. “As a boy, you don’t know the danger. All you’re doing is enjoying yourself,” Peter said. His dad always “swore blind” that an unexploded bomb lay where Southwark Park Road meets Jamaica Road. “My old man never missed a trick,” Peter said.
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On one occasion, Peter’s thirst for adventure did run him into trouble when he got trapped in the air raid shelter directly beneath his family’s flat. Peter recalls: “My mum said don’t you dare go down there. It was quite cavernous and the door shut on me and I couldn’t get out. It was pitch black. All of a sudden, the trap door opened and it was filled with light. My sister said she knew I’d be down there. Mum knocked the living sh*te out of me!”
You could say the Kiddies’ Party in the summer of 1946 encaptured the national spirit of the time. A community of families had pitched together to put on a show of solidarity despite the tough circumstances. In traditional English fashion, beers were flowing. Last weekend, Three Lions supporter downed two months’ worth of beer at a bar in Gelsenkirchen before England’s clash with Serbia. Kirby residents could enjoy similar indulgences with The George, The Jamaica Tavern and The Swan all within twenty yards of the estate. “My dad was in heaven because he was a drunk,” Peter said.
On his return, Peter bumped into Chris Dowse, one of the residents behind the estate’s biannual football celebrations. “I so appreciate what you’ve done,” Peter said. But what is it about the Kirby that produces such flag-waving fever? Even Peter, a sparkly pensioner with a well-informed answer and anecdote for just about anything, can’t put his finger on it. “Why? I don’t know! Your guess is as good as mine, son!”
