'Your Anderson shelter will be collected': Birmingham's letter to householders

A City of Birmingham circular telling householders that their Anderson shelter would be collected, or could be bought: 15s for the four-sheet size, £1 for larger ones.

A duplicated letter on City of Birmingham Air Raid Precautions Department paper (Ruskin Chambers, 191 Corporation Street), signed for George L. Head as Civil Defence Officer. It asks householders to have 'all the parts of your shelter dismantled and ready to deliver up to the authorised collector', or to buy the shelter within seven days.

Notes

Place: Birmingham, city-wide. It was sent to every household with a council-issued Anderson shelter, which would have included the Kingstanding estate, but this copy's address is unknown. Date: Commons says '1940s'. Collecting and selling off shelters points to the end of the war or just after, probably 1945–46 (inference). Local link: Voices of Kingstanding contributors remember Anderson shelters in Hurlingham Road and elsewhere. One remembers sledging on 'the curved side piece of an Anderson air raid shelter'. Brian Noden (BBC People's War A7568616) says his family bought theirs from the council for £1. Location confidence: confirmed (Birmingham); not specific to Kingstanding.