Bournemouth At War / "HAMBLEDON", LEVEN AVENUE Traditional Cache

Bournemouth has a great history. I have documented many famous people, major events and occurrences in previous geocaching series highlighting the history of Bournemouth. This series focuses on many of the key incidents and stories in the town when Bournemouth was at war. A complete list of all the caches in this series are bookmarked.

Planes and bombs in the second half of 1940 caused major destruction and devastation to the town and its people. This cache covers two stories from this time that tragically occurred at the same location 91 days apart.



15th August 1940 - Black Thursday
Thursday 15th August 1940 was called by the Germans “Der schwarze Donnerstag” (Black Thursday). It has been described as the hardest fought day during the Battle of Britain when the Luftwaffe lost seventy six aircraft and some of their crews.

On that day the sirens sounded the alert at 5:20pm as German bombers, heavily escorted by Messerschmitt Bf 109 flew over the town, the All Clear being given at 7:30pm. It was during the raid that the only Allied airman to die in action over Bournemouth was killed. Pilot Officer Cecil Henry Hight, aged 22, a New Zealander serving with the RAF as a fighter pilot of 234 Squadron from Middle Wallop, Wiltshire, was shot down whilst attacking the large formation of enemy aircraft.



Horrified people watched as his plane nosedived towards the ground from 5,000 feet. Pilot officer Hight managed to bail out but he was badly wounded and unable to pull the ripcord of his parachute. His body was found in the garden of “Hambledon”, Leven Avenue. The owner, Mr Alfred K. Hoare, a retired builder, said that he and his wife had taken shelter at the warning and then they had heard a loud noise outside. The police and rescue workers arrived and told Mr. Hoare that a plane had crashed at the corner of Leven Avenue and Walsford Road. A search was made for the pilot and he was eventually located under a privet hedge not fifty yards from where his Spitfire R6988 had crashed at 5:46pm making a large crater and scattering debris over the immediate area. Part of the rudder had already broken off during the plane's descent and other wreckage had fallen near the town centre. One wing was found on top of a hedge in Walsford Road. The plane was a complete “write-off”. A rumour sprang up that had the pilot stayed with his machine he would have survived because the plane had “landed on a carpet of pine needles”. The report in the local paper does say that according to an eyewitness the plane “landed flat”, but other accounts state that the plane was very badly damaged and made a large crater. It appears that in order to avoid inflicting casualties on the ground, Hight piloted his stricken plane away from the built up area of the town and towards Meyrick Park. He bailed out as the plane came down but his parachute did not open. He may well have been already dead from machine gun wounds before he hit the ground. The owners of the house planted a Memorial Garden at the same location.

The memory of Pilot Hight lives on in the town with a road named after him on a housing estate in Kinson. A memorial stone was unveiled on 15 August 2015 at the junction of Walsford Road, Benellen Avenue and Leven Avenue, by the Mayor, and can be seen when finding this cache.






14th November 1940
The first raids in November 1940 came on the 10th, when ten high explosive bombs were dropped on Knyveton and Vale Road, killing four people. The next night there was another incendiary raid, this time in Southbourne, causing slight damage to 10 properties, however, thankfully there were no casualties. It was a few days later on 14th November that the “Hambledon” house on Leven Avenue became the fateful location of another loss of life, just 91 days after Pilot Officer Hight was found in the garden.

At 11.35pm the Terrace Road area was hit, and so was Leven Avenue, by 12 high explosive bombs. 372 houses were damaged, 8 people injured and 5 killed, four from one family. Also killed was Mr Alfred J. Hoare when his house “Hambledon”, in Leven Avenue, was destroyed. Alfred and Edith Hoare were both dug out of the rubble, but Alfred died on the way to hospital. He was pronounced dead at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Bournemouth on the 15th, and is buried in Wimborne Road Cemetery. The Hoares' garden of remembrance was not damaged, and continued to be tended by local people for many years afterwards.