Millennium Project
World War 2 The Unexploded Bombs of Deddington
As first told to David Hood and now confirmed by Brian Fuller
Shortly after David Hood and his family moved to Deddington in the early 1980s, he met Fred Deeley, a Deddington worthy of longstanding, but now no longer with us. Fred frequently walked his dog up Green Hedges Lane past David's house and would often stop for a chat as he worked in his garden.
"On one occasion we got talking about World War Two and Fred told me that one night during a raid on Coventry (there were three heavy raids on that city) an enemy aircraft flew over Deddington and jettisoned five bombs, fortunately they all fell North of the village and remarkably none exploded, burying themselves deep in one of Charlie Fuller's fields. Fred's recollection was that they fell more or less parallel to the main Oxford to Banbury road and well short of Earls Lane. Sometime later an Army bomb disposal team inspected the holes that the bombs had made and decided there was no immediate threat as they were quite deeply embedded; as it was the team had their hands full with Coventry after the raids."
Notes:
* For a map of all the bombs dropped on Oxfordshire click HERE (courtesy of David Hood) and to read an account of Oxfordshire at War given to the Deddington & District History Society in February 2001 click HERE
# The field is not a public right of way and is a long way from the village.