THE lasting effects on people and buildings due to Second World War bombing in Barrow is put in the spotlight in a new short film.

Former Barrow Sixth Form College student Matthew Dodd presented The Barrow Blitz: 75 Years On to two fully-booked sessions at Barrow archive.

He is soon to start studying for a degree in film production at Salford University and would like a career in film making The Monday and Tuesday shows also featured displays put together by Barrow archivist Susan Benson.

In show were war diaries and ration books, maps of shelters and where bombs fell and registers of blitz deaths and volunteer firefighters.

The film was narrated by Graham Cubbin from the Dock Museum who showed some of the town centre car parks and gardens which replaced some of the most badly damaged houses.

The main period of aerial attacks on the town had been from April 14 to 16 and May 3 to 10.

Key targets had been the shipyard, docks and petrol storage tanks – clearly marked on a German map found on a captured French airfield in 1944.

He said: “The vast majority of bombs dropped in the Second World War missed their targets.”

In built-up areas this meant that houses took the brunt of the damage which was intended for military or industrial sites.

The Barrow blitz left somewhere between than 70 and 90-odd dead – there is no exact figure – and resulted in the demolition of more than 600 Barrow homes.

Many people who experienced the air attacks in 1941 were interviewed for the film.

Derek Lyon, then aged nine, lived with his parents above a chemist’s shop in Hartington Street.

He said: “When the bombs fell you felt the whole house shake.” Lilian Wookey, then aged five, recalled bombs hitting the Crellin Street area and everyone being covered in soot.

Muriel Wakefield’s family had to leave the Barrow Island flats during raids, to reach a shelter on school playing fields.