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| Marples Hotel ruins after Blitz, 13 Dec 1940 (Picture Sheffield: s02100) |
An exciting discovery has recently been made at Sheffield
City Archives - a lost eyewitness account from a Sheffield Blitz survivor of
the bombing of the Marples Hotel in Fitzalan Square. At 11.44pm on the night of 12th
December 1940, the Marples Hotel suffered a direct hit from a 500 lb Luftwaffe
bomb which sent all seven stories of the building crashing down, killing an
estimated 70+ people who were seeking refuge from the air raid attack in the
cellars below. It was the single biggest loss of life sustained in the
Sheffield Blitz.
The eyewitness account is that of Lionel George Ball, a
27 year-old lorry driver, who lived at 180 Badminton Road in Bristol, one of just
seven people recorded as having been pulled out alive from the hotel ruins. The
account was found in a Sheffield City Coroner’s inquest case file into a presumption of death from enemy action.
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| Part of Lionel Ball's statement, July 1941 (Sheffield City Archives: CC1/5/2) |
The inquest in question was held specifically into the ‘alleged
death’ of Frank Dalton of 20 Popple Street, Sheffield, who was believed to have
been killed in the Marples but his body (like so many of those sheltering in
the cellars of the hotel when the bomb struck) was never recovered and
identified. The inquest was not held until August 1941 (eight months after the
fatal Luftwaffe attack). Dalton was serving as a sergeant in the Royal Air
Force at the time but was thought to have been back in Sheffield on leave on
the night of 12th December 1940 where he is understood to have gone
to the Marples.
Just seven Sheffield
City Coroner’s inquest case files into ‘alleged deaths’ of individuals thought
to have been killed in the Marples Hotel have survived in the Sheffield City
Coroner’s collection at Sheffield City Archives where they are stored in
bundles respectively dated 1940 and 1941 (ref. CC1/5/1-2). The newly discovered
inquest case file had evidently been misfiled many decades previous, in a bundle
from a different year. The file has
now been reunited with other inquests from 1941. Unlike the other
coroner’s inquest case files, this new file includes a clear and compelling
witness statement from someone who took shelter in the cellars of the Marples on
the night of 12th December 1940 but was one of the fortunate few to surface
the next day from the rubble alive. The inquest confirms how on the morning of
13th December, seven men were rescued from the cellars and
statements were obtained from five of
them, one of whom was Lionel George Ball.
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| Marples Hotel as it stood in 1905 (Picture Sheffield: s03284) |
In his statement (dated 29 July 1941) submitted to the
Sheffield Police and passed to the inquest, Ball relates how he had arrived in
Sheffield from Bristol on the night of 12th December 1940 and had
gone for a drink at the Marples Hotel with a fellow lorry driver William
Wallace King who was also employed by the same Bristol-based firm (King is
listed as another of the seven survivors from the Marples).
Ball recalls how the air raid that night started around
7.10pm but became so intense that it was felt unsafe to leave the hotel and so
he and King took refuge in the cellar bar (known as the ‘Tudor Lounge’) where
he estimates there were between 60 and 80 other people. He recalls an earlier
bomb blast in the vicinity of the hotel which injured several people in the
cellar bar. This would have been a bomb known to have been dropped at 10.50pm
which hit C&A Modes Department Store (standing opposite the Marples Hotel),
the flying debris from which struck the hotel. Ball tells of how he and King
helped to take some of the injured into the ‘Bottle Stores’ adjoining the
cellar bar where they remained with five other men. An eighth man joined them moments
before the hotel received a “direct hit”. This was the fatal bomb which fell at
11.44pm. After the bomb hit, in Ball’s words:
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| Public-house entertainment at the Marples Hotel, Fitzalan Square, 30 March 1940 (Picture Sheffield: s02038) |
“the
place seemed to collapse, but the roof of the part of the cellar where we were
held. A fire started and it was like a furnace all round us. The exits were
blocked by debris...”
Ball goes on to tell how one of the eight men in the
Bottle Stores later died from his wounds and the seven remaining survivors were
“cut off” in the cellar until 10am the following morning. Ball says: “We were digging ourselves out all night by
using our hands and pipes which we wrenched off the barrels”.
When shown a photograph by the Sheffield Police of the
missing man at the centre of the particular inquest, Frank Dalton, Ball was
able to confirm how he was the same man (wearing an RAF sergeant’s uniform) he
had spoken to earlier on that fateful night in the Tudor Lounge cellar bar, thus
confirming that Dalton was in the Marples shortly before the hotel was struck. Ball
recalled how Dalton had told him how he had flown several missions over Germany
in the course of the war. Another witness for the inquest, Alfred Pickett, a 28
year-old plumber, who lived at 133 White Lane, Gleadless (and who had a lucky
escape after he left the Marples Hotel just minutes before it was bombed) told
of seeing an “RAF air gunner” he believed to have been Frank Dalton coming down
the stairs to the Tudor Lounge who had been cut by “flying glass” from the
earlier blast which struck C&A Modes. He heard Dalton say: “Fancy me having been over Germany so many
times and having to put up with this”. When Pickett left the Marples around
11.30pm, he noticed the man he identified as Dalton sitting in the Tudor
Lounge. 15 minutes later Dalton and the some 70+ people with him were dead.
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| Marples Hotel – ruins with survivor on stretcher, 13 Dec 1940 (Picture Sheffield: s02104) |
There were no survivors recovered from the Tudor Lounge
cellar bar. The Bristolians Ball and King evidently owe their chance survival
to the fact that they had helped to take those injured in the earlier blast
into the adjoining Bottle Stores, the roof of which somehow held whilst the
main cellar roof collapsed, killing all those sheltering underneath.
For more information on the Sheffield Blitz, see our Study Guide: https://www.sheffield.gov.uk/home/libraries-archives/access-archives-local-studies-library/research-guides/blitz
The Sheffield Blitz Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SheffieldBlitz75th
Blitz exhibition at the National Emergency Services Museum, Sheffield: http://www.emergencymuseum.org.uk/
