Marples Hotel Tragedy

BOOK SOUTH YORKSHIRE HOTELS

Marples Hotel Tragedy

Sheffield, South Yorkshire The 12th of December 1940 AD

Sheffield, vital to British armaments production because of its steel plants, was targeted on the night of December 12 1940 in a raid by 300 German bombers . But navigational errors led to the firebombs and high explosives being rained down on the city centre.
Many in Sheffield 's city centre sought shelter in the substantial cellars beneath the Victorian hotel known as Marples Hotel (after its original owner) on Fitzalan Square. But at 11.44 a direct hit reduced the seven-storey structure to a pile of rubble less than 15 feet high. Seventy died in the cellars, though miraculously seven men were pulled alive from the debris the next day.

More famous dates here

10187 views since 1st December 2008

Brit Quote:
To sentence a man of true genius, to the drudgery of a school is to put a racehorse on a treadmill - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
More Quotes

On this day:
Great Fire of London 1212 - 1212, Nelson Loses Eye - 1794, First Briton Killed in Aircraft Accident - 1910, Debut of the Rolling Stones - 1962
More dates from British history

click here to view all the British counties

County Pages