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."

Brian Fuller (son of Charlie and now farming the land) takes up the story:

"The bombs all fell in Suckley Hill Field (click on map to get full size image) which is right next to the Banbury road and immediately south of Paper Mill Lane. The field was very soft because it was ploughed and the bombs had buried themselves deep into the ground. My Dad wondered if they had been trying to bomb the road but it was just as likely that they had been jettisoned.The Bomb Disposal chaps had long sticks which they prodded into the ground and decided they were so deep as not to be a danger and left. They never came back. There was a map of bombs dropped on Oxfordshire* but for some reason they got left off. Perhaps they just got forgotten; so they are still there but, after all this time of farming activity over them since, I think we can say they are safe."#

The Coventry Air-Raids
   Enemy Planes involved
14 November 1940
   400)
8 April 1941
   300) estimates
10 April 1941
   200)
                                                              Total Civilians killed in the raids during 1940/41 -  1236                 

BombFieldmap.enh
                                                                                                                                                                                           

 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.