V2 Rocket at St Margaret’s Hospital

It was 2.43am on March 22, ten days after a rocket exploded in a field south of Bridge Hill in Epping, when the town shook during the Second World War as 463,000 gallons of water gushed from a water tower in the grounds of St Margaret’s Emergency Hospital after being hit by a V2 long-range rocket.

Houses in Fairfield Road and Union Terrace, the elderly unit and laundry block at the hospital and a single storey timber built casual ward which housed vagrants were destroyed.

At 3am, only 17 minutes after the blast, two Incident Officers Posts were set up, one by residents whose homes had been flooded, and one in the grounds of the hospital.

“Group Seven”, a local search and rescue team who operated in Chigwell and Waltham Abbey, were called to the scene and asked to prepare ambulances and rescue parties in hopes of finding survivors amongst the wreckage of the casual ward.

Rescue parties operated in the ward and after an hour they had recovered the bodies of vagrants John Baker, 67, William Harris, 72, George Luxton, 75 and James Price, 75 and pulled 15 others from the wreckage, seven severely injured.

The body of Epping man, Alfred John Brace Ford, 67, was also found on the grounds of the hospital.

Despite his address being Briar Cottage in Epping Green, the former farm labourer had been staying in the casual ward when it had collapsed due to the attack.

At 4.20am, Mr. England, the Master of the Hospital, confirmed that a long-range rocket had fallen at the hospital, practically destroying the Old People’s Section, and that the forty women and twenty men would need to be transferred to alternative accommodation.

The community pulled together to help those affected.

The National Fire Service (NFS) worked to pump the flooded areas out into a crater which was situated in the East of the town and mobile canteens arrived in the area to provide food and hot drinks to the rescuers and the injured.

Two days later, it was announced that hospital clerk John Parish, 30, who had spent the night in a room on the casual ward after missing the last bus back home to his wife in Harlow, had died from his injuries.

On April 18, almost one month after the attack, the seventh and final fatal victim, William Dalton, 82, died from his injuries.

Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, sent the following message to the hospital: “Mrs Churchill and I deeply regret to hear the grave news and wish to express our sympathy with casualties and their relatives.”