Local Memoirs
Bank Row Bombing

(Published courtesy of Hillhead Primary)

THE BANK ROW BOMBING

By the end of May 1940 defeat of Holland and Denmark and especially the occupation of Norway made it easier for German planes to get to Wick. Wick received more attention from German planes than any other town in the far north. Official figures say that 222 high explosives were dropped on Caithness and that Wick was attacked six times.

Harbour Area From The Air


The first bomb to fall in Wick was on July 1st 1940 and was the most serious attack. The war was less than a year old and there had been little bombing of mainland Britain. It was at the end of the period called the phoney war, when people did not know much about bombing. The London Blitz was still to come.  The bomb fell in Bank Row at the end of a summer afternoon. It was the first recorded daylight bombing of Britain in the Second World War.

The bomb fell during the school holidays when many children were out playing on the street in the Bank Row area. Because of the war the summer holidays in 1940 were extended prom June 18th and went right on to October 1st. There were fears about collecting children together and the Bank Row bomb highlighted the danger of this. The death of 15 people which included 8 children shocked Wick.


Bank Row Today
Bank Row is one of the oldest streets in Pulteneytown. Bank Row is situated beside the harbour and was ideal for the business of a busy herring port.

The shops consisted of two tailors, an ironmonger, a butcher, three grocers, one furniture store, one baker, a confectionery shop and a fancy goods and clothes shop. Even though the herring trade was in decline Bank Row still had three kilns for smoking herring, a cartwrights workshop, and a blacksmiths.  The Bank Row of 1940 was much busier than the Bank Row of today.

People's memories of the bombings show how much the town was taken by surprise by the daylight raid.  There was shock and anxiety  Many people's memories of the bombings in Wick show how people were often frightened that their friends or relatives could have been hurt in the bombings.  Mr James Clark's house was one of those which was bombed out in the Bank Row bombing.  He lived at 4 Bank Row although at the time was a soldier serving in Caithness. 

"I was a corporal in the 5th Seaforth Highlanders and when the bombs were dropped I was sitting on Top of a hotel in Lybster rigging up a radio aerial. I heard the bombs drop from 13 miles away. We all it felt it or heard it and when I came down a dispatch rider came into the mess and he told me that Wick was bombed and I asked where and he said "Oh! a wee road leading up to the harbour and a shop called Smiths had been bombed and all the people were killed and the people next door were killed. I said "What?"  It was a shock. My Sergeant Major said "get on your bike", I had an army motor bike. I went down to Wick and when I got to my house the police would not let me near it because they said there was a time bomb there and if I went up there it might go off. I was not brave but the thought of my wife and child being there and with on of the A.R.P. men telling me they were both killed. I pushed him aside and went up the hill to the house and climbed in. There were no stairs. I was fortunate that my wife was out shopping with our son Hamish who was about 3 or 4 years old and if they were in the house I am afraid they would have been killed too, but they were in Bridge Street and she was with her mother, taking her home. The house was destroyed, only a few pots and pans and some chairs were saved from it." (Mr Clark).



Huddart Street
 "I lived in Huddart Street at the time. I was just on my way for a message. I had to collect some wallpaper for the house from the street. I passed the spot the bomb dropped just a few minutes before it fell. After it fell I saw nothing but dust high in the air. No way did I think it was bombs. I never heard or seen a bomb before." (Mr Mackay)

"I was working in the Lemonade factory with my father in law and I was looking out the window at the time and I saw the bombs being dropped. We heard the planes coming in and we were looking out because we knew the difference. We heard the explosions and everything shook and we went down afterwards and saw where it had dropped and the crater in the road." (Mrs Bremner)

"I lived and worked in the British Linen Bank house in Bridge Street. I was working in the kitchen preparing the tea and no siren had gone. The mistress came in and said that the gas works had exploded. The boys of the house came in and said that bombs had fallen on Bank Row. I remember going out to the back door with one of the boys and seeing the German plane going back up the river machine gunning, although nobody was hit by this. Well the siren went then and we had to go into the basement of the Bank, which was our shelter. It was people coming into the shelter off the street that told us the damage the bombs had done to Bank Row"  (Mrs Macleod)

"I was playing in a garage (which is now Presto's store - subsequently Safeways) with some friends. We heard the bombs drop but we were not sure where they had fell. We went down High Street and Sloans windows (the old 99p shop beside Camps Bar) were blown in. We made our way down to Bank row. There was a lot of havoc, there was a crater in the middle of the road. We saw one or two coming out of the bombed area."  (Mr I. Mackay)

"The afternoon the bombs fell I was in the bath in my mothers' at West Banks Terrace. It sounds crazy I know. I was lying in a lovely warm bath, suddenly there was an appalling noise. I had now idea what was happening. I got out of the bath pretty quickly. It was only a little later that the news began to come through about the bombs dropped in Pulteney. Until then the war was a very remote thing, something that happened somewhere else, but suddenly it was right on our doorstep. We were part of it. That was quite a shock to realise it."  (Mrs M Robertson)

"My mother sent us on a message and we were making down Shore Lane. We got to where the old Sutherland's furniture shop is in High Street. When the bombs fell somebody took us inside the shop. We never went any further, we came back home. We didn't know it was bombs, we were young and we didn't know what it was really"  (Mrs B Gunn)

"There was a wee shop in Williamson Street, which is now Larnachs (Closed January 2003). My mother sent me for baking there that day. I met my next door neighbour, Isobel Mackenzie, in the shop and left her just outside. She went over the road to see her father who worked in the Labour Exchange that was on the corner of Williamson Street. Then she went to see her father-in-law who was Mr Mackenzie, the tailor and had a shop in Bank Row. She was in his shop when the bomb fell and they were two of the people that were killed. I had just arrived home with my mum's baking when the bombs fell. We didn't know what had happened. My mother took us down to what is now called Whitehouse Park, it used to be big fields there. Looking over the harbour we could see smoke and the horses were all galloping about with fright. Afterwards it was awful knowing that my next door neighbour had been killed and that I had just said "Cheerio" to her. It was such a shock my hair started to fall out.

I also remember at the end of the war when I was 14, they were sorting out the records in the High School, they were using pupils to go along to people who had left school without their certificates and I was given the boy Thompson's one. I was young and had forgotten all about him being killed and so must the teachers. I went and knocked on the door and told his mother that this was to help her son get a job. Mrs Thomson said "Oh ma lassie, my son won't need it now. He was killed in the Bank Row bombing. It was terrible and I felt sad about that." (Mrs Budge)

"It was a fine afternoon though there was a cloud about and I was out playing on my bike with my chums. I saw this big black looking aircraft coming over the town - down from the Watten side of Wick. I watched it for a while and I thought that's a strange aircraft as I could not recognise it as on of our own. So I watched it flying out over the harbour. Then there was a big bang and a cloud of smoke rising from the harbour area. I realised that this was a German bomber that had made its run across the town. We saw some of the injured people being brought into the hospital, which was then the Bignold hospital, which is now transformed into homes. I was standing in my friends house, upstairs looking over the hospital and I saw the injured coming in"  (Mr Cameron)

The last comment was by Mr George Cameron who lived in Hill Avenue up near the airport.  The target for the Bank Row bombing was thought to be the harbour.  The bombing raid on Wick was to attack the airport.  Once again civilians were to be killed as the bombers missed the airport.