The Mortlake with East Sheen Society is opening the Air Raid Shelter in St Leonards Road on Sunday 15 September 2024 from 1.00 to 5.00pm

Heritage buildings nationwide, which are not normally open to the public, will be open on 15 September. This includes the air raid shelter at St Leonards Court, a unique local structure.  Your primary school children or grandchildren may have visited, so do not miss this opportunity to see what they have seen.

The building is an important relic of World War 2, which was saved by MESS and the Environment Trust (now Habitats & Heritage) over 15 years ago and spot-listed. 

The shelter was started in late 1938. It was built in two stages, solely for the use of the residents of St. Leonards Court. The first stage was a couple of rooms with toilets for people to wait out the danger for a short while, but later as the war got worse, a second section was added for people to spend the whole night down there.

Entry is through a solidly locked door in a very back-garden style round brick shed with a tiled roof and then down twelve steps to the underground spaces.


School age children were evacuated from Sheen. They took their suitcase and gas masks (which were never used) to school and left for Windsor by train with their teacher. So only under fives and their parents used it. They would only spend a couple of hours down there until the all clear sounded.

There is no lighting down there, so tours are illuminated by large portable floodlights.

During an air-raid, up to 120 people could have sat here. In 1940 a second row of rooms was added and this time fitted for sleeping in. Divided into cells, with three rows of double-width beds in each, it could hold 48 families – or more likely mothers and children — in the space. They had toilets and each bed had its own lamp and switch so people could read without disturbing their neighbours.

Residents of the flats had to pay £7 a year for the family to use the bunks, although with so many families in close proximity often chatting at night, it was not an easy place in which to sleep. Residents sometimes took their chances above ground. One local resident who died a few years ago, Leslie Hammond, recalled that his father would never stay down there at night because he could not sleep. He went back to his flat and took his chances.

Members of the MESS Committee will be there to greet you and show you round.