The museum of Soho

Background: Newport Dwellings, Newport Place · reproduced in Roy Harrison, Blitz over Westminster, p.22

The museum of Soho · Digital archive

West End at War

Soho, the Blitz and the recovery of a lost community history archive

Between 1940 and 1945 the West End was repeatedly attacked from the air. Soho's streets, homes, churches, theatres, clubs and businesses were damaged — while residents, wardens, firefighters and volunteers kept the district functioning.

Explore the incidentsBack to exhibitions
Bomb damage and clearance operations near St Anne’s Church, Dean Street, 1941Bomb incidents in SohoExplore the surviving accounts of the raids and their impact on Soho.Explore the incidents → Westminster bomb map covering SohoMaps and recordsContemporary bomb maps, Civil Defence messages and archival evidence.Explore the records → Museum of Soho West End at War exhibition materialPeople and their storiesAir-raid wardens, residents and recorded voices of wartime Soho.Hear their stories →

A LOST ARCHIVE, RECOVERED

Westminster at war — seen from Soho

West End at War was created by Westminster City Archives with volunteers and community participants. For five years volunteers researched Second World War bomb incidents, linked them to a detailed bomb map, and scanned primary documents from Westminster's Civil Defence archive.

The original website brought together bomb-incident summaries, eyewitness testimony, maps, photographs, Civil Defence documents, contemporary artworks and rare colour film. The site later disappeared from the web.

The Museum of Soho was subsequently given an incomplete collection of project files. This digital archive brings surviving material back together, concentrating on Soho while retaining important connected stories such as the Café de Paris and Al Bowlly.

Museum of Soho West End at War panel introducing Roy Harrison and the Civil Defence archive
Roy Harrison’s research and Westminster’s Civil Defence records underpin the Museum’s 2026 exhibition and this digital reconstruction.

READING THE BLITZ

The bomb maps of Soho

Westminster’s Map Record of Incidents in the City of Westminster, 1940–1945 (archive reference CD 142) brings together reported wartime incidents across the period. Red and green symbols distinguish exploded and unexploded bombs; other rings and symbols record delay-action bombs, parachute mines, V1s, V2s, incendiaries and anti-aircraft shells. The large rings identify weapon type or weight rather than measured blast radius.

Museum of Soho West End at War bomb maps of Soho, based on Westminster City Archives CD 142
City of Westminster Archives, CD 142. Interpretation informed by Roy Harrison, Blitz over Westminster (1990). Click the map to enlarge.

SOHO 1940–45

Bomb incidents

The original West End at War database export has allowed the Museum to recover several incident pages that were previously known only from fragments. The summaries below distinguish recovered original pages from material that is still incomplete.

Berwick Street Market

A delayed-action bomb left a large crater at the lower end of Berwick Street Market. Contemporary reporting recorded traders returning to business around the crater.

Soho Fire Station, 72 Shaftesbury Avenue

At 7.45pm a high-explosive bomb struck Soho Fire Station, virtually demolishing the building. Two passers-by sheltering at the station were killed. Station Officer Leslie William George Wilson BEM and Auxiliary Fireman Frederick Mitchell also lost their lives; their bodies were recovered from the wreckage two days later. Fire appliances and vehicles were buried beneath debris and Shaftesbury Avenue was blocked.

Bomb damage at Soho Fire Station on Shaftesbury Avenue after the raid of 7 October 1940
Soho Fire Station after the bombing of 7 October 1940. City of Westminster Archives, Civil Defence photograph collection, CD/7/131.2, p.5.

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24 Greek Street

A high-explosive bomb caused major damage, ignited a gas main and blocked Greek Street and Old Compton Street. The recovered page links three ARP message forms to the incident.

St James’s Residences, Brewer Street

The recovered page records forty-five casualties: five dead, twenty ambulance cases and twenty First Aid Post cases. Rescue work continued for about six hours.

Café de Paris

The database preserves the original Café de Paris article by Patrick Collins, Raquel Burchett and Peter Daniel, together with Grace Baird’s page on Ken “Snakehips” Johnson.

Newport Buildings / Shaftesbury Theatre

The recovered original page records the parachute mine that struck Newport Buildings at about 3.25 a.m. on 17 April, destroying the adjoining Shaftesbury Theatre.

Jermyn Street / Al Bowlly

The original Jermyn Street page and four linked Civil Defence records are recovered. They document the destructive blast around Jermyn Street and Duke Street in which Al Bowlly was killed at Duke’s Court.

Old Compton Street / Dean Street

The original incident page has been recovered. It records the destruction of 59–60 Dean Street, including Patisserie Valerie, and the difficult rescue operation while fire obstructed the site.

Wartime bomb damage near St Anne’s Church, with a crane and rescue workers among rubble in Dean Street
Dean Street and St Anne’s Church, May 1941. Bomb damage and clearance operations following the raids of 10–11 May 1941. Photograph supplied from the Museum of Soho’s Westminster Archives copy. Credit: City of Westminster Archives Centre. Original negative or album reference to be confirmed.

Carlisle Street

Recovered records describe severe damage around Carlisle House and Richmond Buildings, reports of trapped fire-watchers and an urgent gas escape that halted rescue work.

PRIMARY SOURCES

Reports from the Raid

The surviving Soho records are among the strongest parts of the recovered archive. These are operational Civil Defence forms: short, urgent messages written while rescue work, firefighting and road clearance were still under way. We preserve the scans as evidence and keep transcription separate; uncertain or unreadable words are never silently filled in.

ARP message form occurrence 1522D, Old Compton Street and Dean Street, 11 May 1941
Old Compton Street / Dean Street, 11 May 1941 — occurrence 1522D. About 40 people reported trapped; the surviving message includes an urgent request for further rescue assistance. Original asset record: 11_mAY_41_1522D.jpg. Westminster City Archives.
ARP message form occurrence 1522G, Old Compton Street, 11 May 1941
Old Compton Street, 11 May 1941 — occurrence 1522G. “Fire seriously interfering with rescue work.” The report records consultation about whether rescue work could continue. Original asset record: 11_May_41_old_compton_street_1522G1.jpg. Westminster City Archives.
ARP message form for St Anne's Church, Dean Street, 7 October 1940
St Anne’s Church, 7 October 1940. Incendiary report received at 21:15 after the earlier September destruction. Original asset record: 7-10-40_St_Anns_Church_IB290.jpg. Westminster City Archives.
ARP report for Greek Street and Old Compton Street, 11 October 1940
24 Greek Street, 11 October 1940. The recovered reports document blocked approaches, casualties, fire and a gas-main emergency. Database assets include 24_greek_street_icd_11.jpg, ..._21.jpg and ..._51.jpg. Westminster City Archives.
ARP message form occurrence 1468E, Carlisle Street and Dean Street
Carlisle Street — occurrence 1468E. An early report notes fire-watchers trapped amid the damage around Carlisle House and Dean Street. Westminster City Archives.
Air Raid Damage Report for St James's Residences, Brewer Street, 26 October 1940
St James’s Residences, Brewer Street, 26 October 1940. Air Raid Damage Report 862 and its Permanent Record entries survive; one of the three images listed by the original site remains missing. Westminster City Archives.
Air Raid Damage Report for Shaftesbury Avenue
Shaftesbury Avenue Fire Station. The recovered original page links an incident file for 7 October 1940 with an Air Raid Damage Report for 95 Shaftesbury Avenue dated 16 November 1940. Westminster City Archives.
Air Raid Damage Report for Jermyn Street, 17 April 1941
Jermyn Street, 17 April 1941 — incident 1327. The recovered report records extensive destruction around Jermyn Street and Duke Street. This incident killed Al Bowlly at Duke’s Court. Westminster City Archives.

Download the recovered Soho air-raid reports dossier

The dossier also records transcription uncertainty, archive limitations and the relationship between the original West End at War page narratives and the surviving report scans.

AN AFRICAN AIR-RAID WARDEN

Ita Ekpenyon

E. Ita Ekpenyon was born in Creek Town, Calabar, Nigeria, in 1899. A teacher and later headmaster, he came to London in 1928 intending to study law. By the outbreak of the Second World War he was living at 146 Great Titchfield Street and training for Civil Defence work; his surviving St Marylebone service card records wardens’ service from 5 February 1940.

Ekpenyon became a Senior Warden responsible for his sector and was later promoted to Deputy Post Warden. His duties included patrols, blackout enforcement, shelter management, first aid, rescue work and keeping local population records so wardens could judge who might be trapped when buildings were hit. During the Blitz he also made broadcasts for the BBC Empire Service’s Calling West Africa programme.

His own account, Some Experiences of an African Air-Raid Warden, was first published by Sheldon Press in 1943. The original West End at War project later republished the account as a 45-page educational publication, adding the St Marylebone bomb map, Civil Defence organisation, message forms, material on shelters and training, and sections on race, empire and wartime unity.

The recovered West End at War database now gives us much stronger provenance. It preserves original pages including A Nigerian Air-Raid Warden in St Marylebone, Unity & Division and West Indian & Africans in Civil Defence, together with Ekpenyon’s service card and several photographs credited to Winifred Ekpenyon. The archive also identifies footage of Ekpenyon marching with fellow St Marylebone D2 sector wardens in 1941.

The surviving West End at War film uses Ekpenyon’s own words, read by Nigerian actor Wale Ojo, alongside rare colour footage filmed by A. E. Reneson Coucher OBE, family photographs and animation made by children and parents working with Westminster Archives and animator Tom Hillenbrand.

Read the recovered West End at War publication ↗
Watch the surviving West End at War film ↗

8 MARCH 1941

Café de Paris

The original West End at War database preserves two connected strands of the story: Grace Baird’s page on bandleader Ken “Snakehips” Johnson and the later Cafe de Paris article by Patrick Collins, Raquel Burchett and Peter Daniel. The latter describes the club’s wartime reputation as one of London’s safest and most glamorous night-time venues before the catastrophic raid of 8 March 1941.

The Museum can also show the surviving official record alongside those recovered community-history pages. Westminster incident 1213 records the attack at about 9.45 p.m.; the final report records 34 people killed, about 50 ambulance cases and about 30 first-aid cases.

Museum of Soho panel showing the official Civil Defence record of the Cafe de Paris bombing, 8 March 1941
City of Westminster Archives Centre, Air Raid Damage Report CD/3/1213.

17 APRIL 1941

Al Bowlly — Jermyn Street and Duke’s Court

The West End at War database preserves the original Jermyn Street SW1 page by Yi Luo together with four linked Civil Defence records: a request from the Devonshire Club, a casualty message, a fire report and the Air Raid Damage Report for the incident.

Westminster incident 1327 records the explosion around Jermyn Street and Duke Street at about 3.10 a.m. The blast killed singer Al Bowlly at his home in Duke’s Court, 32 Duke Street. The surviving report records seven deaths in the incident, ten ambulance cases, two first-aid cases and five people trapped and released.

Museum of Soho panel showing the Civil Defence report for the Jermyn Street incident in which Al Bowlly died
City of Westminster Archives Centre, Air Raid Damage Report CD/3/1327. Recovery status: original Jermyn Street page and four report-form records recovered.

MUSEUM OF SOHO ORAL HISTORIES

Voices of wartime Soho

Read the oral histories and listen to the recordingLeo Zanelli · Edith · Win Lister · R. J. Pugh · Gaston Vignaud

The 2026 exhibition brought the documentary record together with the Museum’s oral-history archive. Leo Zanelli recalled arriving in Soho in 1939, his Italian father’s internment, disruption at school by a parachute mine, the bombing of St Anne’s Church and bomb sites becoming children’s playgrounds. Edith remembered the blackout, shelters, incendiaries, Café de Paris, shrapnel in Brewer Street and the Brewer Street market bombing. Win Lister, Mr R. J. Pugh and Gaston Vignaud add further memories of raids, shelters, rationing and keeping Soho businesses open.

Listen to Voices of Wartime Soho — the Museum of Soho oral-history montage created for the 2026 West End at War exhibition. The Museum preserves the 24-bit / 48 kHz WAV master.

Voices of Wartime Soho guide to the Museum of Soho oral history montage
Guide to the Museum of Soho’s West End at War audio montage.

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RECOVERY REGISTER · 15–16 OCTOBER 2026

Newly traced archive sources

This research register records additional sources traced after the exhibition page was prepared. Catalogue records are not the same as acquired photographs. The source locations below allow the original objects, captions, permissions and digital files to be requested. The existing bomb-incident narratives and testimony above remain unchanged.

Download complete recovery inventory (Excel)

16 October: Westminster Civil Defence photograph albums

Eleven distinct groups, comprising 25 photographs, were identified in the City of Westminster Archives Civil Defence albums. All are Partial: catalogue references have been traced but the original image files have not been acquired. This material supplements, rather than duplicates, the already recovered incident pages and ARP forms.

15 October: map, photographs and eyewitness / broadcast leads

These eight leads include the LCC bomb-damage map of Soho, the 1945 Newport Place bomb-site photograph, a photograph of St Anne’s Church, and leads concerning the Café de Paris and associated eyewitness recordings. The inventory distinguishes accessible reproductions from missing original masters and webpage assets.

What remains outstanding

Priority requests include the original Westminster photographic masters and captions for Old Compton Street / Dean Street (incident 1522), 24 Greek Street (incident 614), Newport Buildings (incident 1335), and Jermyn Street (incident 1327). The original Café de Paris website image assets and the underlying photographic provenance of the St Anne’s Church reproduction also remain to be traced. The previously documented Ita Ekpenyon family-archive photograph, publication and film, and the Al Bowlly report records are retained above without duplication.

Inventory classification: Recovered = an accessible copy or substantive original material has been identified; Partial = catalogue record or incomplete source survives; Referenced but Missing = identified from a reference, but the original material is not yet available. The workbook includes the item-by-item evidence and outstanding actions. These are research records, not counts of recovered original website pages.

ARCHIVE RECOVERY · 17–18 OCTOBER 2026

New leads and surviving photographs

The following discoveries supplement the earlier photographic catalogue survey. These are research notes, not reproductions of original community-site wording. Photographs identified through external catalogues or websites are distinguished from copies actually held by the Museum.

Newport Dwellings, 1945

A second view of the bomb-damaged Newport Dwellings has been identified in the London Picture Archive: SC_PHL_01_498_F2809, catalogue record 142915. This is distinct from the previously recorded F2808 photograph. An online catalogue preview is known; the original high-resolution file remains outstanding.

Newport Dwellings, 1964

A postwar comparison photograph is catalogued as SC_PHL_01_498_64_4649, catalogue record 142789. This is useful evidence of the later site, not a wartime photograph.

Original John Lewis incident page

A surviving 2014 research reference identifies an original West End at War page about the Oxford Street John Lewis bombing: page_id__11_path__0p28p.aspx. The original page itself is not yet recovered; this is a secondary priority outside Soho.

VE Day eyewitness accounts

A Westminster Libraries article from 2020 points to the original West End at War VE Day memories page: page_id__244.aspx?path=0p3p. The original 2010 testimony remains to be recovered; the later article must not be mistaken for the original accounts.

Dean Street and St Anne’s Church

The Museum already holds a Westminster Archives copy of the photograph now displayed above. This is a recovered Museum-held image, not a new photograph downloaded from a commercial website. Its exact catalogue identifier still requires verification against Westminster’s photographic albums.

Original image masters for the other catalogue entries remain outstanding. Archive references and retrieval status are recorded in the research inventory. The original West End at War community-site photographs and captions are not claimed as recovered unless copies can be verified.

PRESERVING A COMMUNITY ARCHIVE

West End at War

The original West End at War website brought together the work of Westminster City Archives, volunteers and community participants to tell the story of the West End during the Second World War. Although the original website later disappeared, much of its historical material survives.

The Museum of Soho is bringing that material back together, with particular emphasis on Soho: bomb incidents, Civil Defence records, maps, photographs, eyewitness accounts and the voices of people who experienced the raids. Important connected stories, including the Café de Paris, Ken “Snakehips” Johnson, Al Bowlly and E. Ita Ekpenyon, are also retained.

Original eyewitness accounts, community memories and testimony are preserved in their own wording, with authorship and provenance retained wherever known. Museum commentary and later historical research are kept separate from the original testimony.

Further archive leads — 19–21 October 2026

Research into the surviving West End at War community archive continues. The references below identify original records and related historical sources. A catalogue reference is not the same as a recovered photograph or document. The Museum will add original images and transcriptions only when copies and appropriate attribution have been established.

Soho incidents and original Civil Defence records

Westminster Archives holds an alphabetical bombing street index (CD/2/24), damaged-premises list (CD/2/21), incident registers (CD/2/5–6), incendiary-bomb register (CD/2/12), casualty-recovery reports (CD/2/17) and unexploded-bomb records (CD/2/16). Further leads include the Plotting Officer’s Log Book (CD/2/2), fire notification register (CD/2/18), and bomb-and-casualty analysis (CD/2/20). These records may help clarify Soho incidents and cross-check the Café de Paris and Al Bowlly accounts; their contents have not yet been transcribed here.

For St Anne’s Church, the catalogue identifies a Report Centre message form associated with incident 457 (CD/2/1/1) and a separate photograph described as 7 October 1940 (CD/7/131.2/4, image A13A6859, incident 290). These are distinct from the Dean Street photograph of May 1941 already displayed on this page. The different incident references require verification against the original records.

Photographs traced in archive catalogues

Further Westminster Civil Defence album entries describe bomb damage at Hampton & Sons, Whitcomb Street (CD/7/131.4/33), Thurston’s, Leicester Square (CD/7/131.3, pp. 14–15), Garlands Hotel, Suffolk Street (CD/7/131.5, pp. 23–24), Bury Street / Ryder Street (CD/7/131.5, pp. 19–20), Panton Street (CD/7/131.6/14), 21A Savile Row (CD/7/131.1, pp. 33–36), and John Lewis, Oxford Street (CD/7/131.1, pp. 25–28). These remain catalogue leads, not acquired image files. The Garlands Hotel and Bury Street incidents should not be mistaken for photographs of the Café de Paris.

24 Greek Street: the album-level description gives incident 614, while individual photograph entries A13A6836 and A13A6837 give 611. Both references are retained pending comparison with the original incident register.

Eyewitnesses, maps and the community project

Additional research leads include Westminster’s fire-watchers’ observation-post map (CD/22/141) and wardens’ organisational maps (CD/22/138). A surviving external quotation preserves part of the former community website’s account of the destruction of Queen’s Hall in May 1941, but the original page and its images remain outstanding. Westminster Council’s surviving project description and its 2016 Archives Education Policy document the original volunteer research and educational work. A further online copy of the Ita Ekpenyon educational publication provides a second preservation location; the work itself is already represented above.

Research status: these are source leads and contextual records, not newly recovered original website image files. Original captions, eyewitness testimony and archive credits will be preserved when materials become available. Source repository: City of Westminster Archives catalogue.

Credits & provenance

West End at War was originally developed by Westminster City Archives with volunteers and community participants, supported by a Heritage Lottery Fund project marking the 70th anniversary of the Blitz.

Digital reconstruction and Soho research: The Museum of Soho. Individual photographers, contributors, archives and rights-holders will be credited against each object wherever known.

Principal provenance used for this reconstruction includes Westminster City Archives / Westminster City Council, the surviving West End at War learning resources and film, contemporary Westminster Libraries material, The National Archives research guidance, and Museum of Soho research and oral-history holdings.