In the early hours of April 29th 1942, in one of the Baedeker Raids, the Luftwaffe bombed York. You can learn all about it on the Raids Over York project, including an interactive map made by Dr Helen Goodchild of the University of York, showing how many different parts of the city were hit.
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| York railway station after the Baedeker Raid of April 29th 1942 (image from the National Railway Museum, via the Raids Over York website). |
Until this afternoon, when we went monkeying about at Homestead Park, I did not know either that the park used to have a menagerie, or that it was one of the places that was hit by Baedeker bombs.
"On 29th April 1942, the house and park were severely damaged in a German air raid."
Monkey bars in the playground? Naturally. Monkey puzzle trees in the ornamental gardens? Of course. Monkeys dodging Hitler's incendiaries in an outhouse? Unlikely-sounding, but true.
This remarkable tale was revealed to us by storyteller Lara McClure, from the Social Vision project, who explained that the park had once had a monkey house, destroyed in 1942, and suggesting to the younger visitors that perhaps there were still some great-great-grandmonkeys to be found, hiding in the trees.
"A Monkey House and Aviary existed in the park until they were destroyed during a wartime air raid in April 1942...Most of the monkeys were killed"
Sadly, though I have only been looking for one evening, I can't find any records online telling us more about the monkeys, the monkey house, or the aviary. I'm going to guess there were marmosets and squirrel monkeys rather than mandrills and baboons, and budgerigars and parakeets rather than ostriches and harpy eagles, but right now I'm willing to let the imagination wander.
I'm also willing to pause for a moment and reflect on the terrifying end of those poor wee primates, and hope that perhaps some of them did escape into the Clifton woods for a better life.
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| Callithrix jacchus, the common marmoset (image from Wikimedia Commons) |
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