Captain Mathy leaves his mark

8 January 2011 in 1910s, Pictures by Brett Holman | 6 comments

Zeppelin Building

59-61 Farringdon Road in London is also known as the Zeppelin Building. I don't know when it received this name; possibly only recently. But it owes it to the fact that its predecessor on the site was destroyed during an air raid on the night of 8 September 1915. The most famous of the Zeppelin commanders, Captain Heinrich Mathy, flew L.13 across central London, dropping bombs from Russell Square to Liverpool Street Station. He and his crew killed 22 people, injured 87 and did over half a million pounds worth of damage, the single most destructive Zeppelin raid of the war. Below is the plaque at the site which commemorates both the destruction of the original premises and its rebuilding in 1917, an act of some optimism and defiance since 'the world war' was still going on with no clear winner in sight.

Zeppelin Building

Thanks to Chris 'Chris A. Williams' Williams for the photos!

    1. Mike Dash’s avatar

      Mike Dash on 8 January 2011 at 11:56 pm

      Thanks for another evocative post, Brett. I remember stumbling across someone else's blog about Mathy's raids a while ago and a bit of searching turned it up:

      http://www.wwiireenacting.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=36352&view=next

      This particular entry concerns a London pub hit by a Zeppelin bomb in 1917. An interesting detail is that the place still displays an old clock stopped by the blast at the time of the raid.

    2. Brett Holman’s avatar

      Brett Holman on 9 January 2011 at 9:22 pm

      Thanks for that Mike. According to the author of a book on the Zeppelin raids which I reviewed here recently, the clock was originally stopped at 10.49 and was that way for many years, but has now slipped down to 10.40. From the link you've given the pub's own memorial now gives the time as 10.40, so it's a small example of history becoming fuzzy.

    3. Mike Dash’s avatar

      Mike Dash on 14 January 2011 at 9:25 pm

      I see from the same post that the War Museum still displays a set of those dubious Zeppelin postcards that you drew attention to in an earlier post, and oddly seems to give credence to them...

      http://img175.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=00548_IWMdisplay_122_153lo.jpg

    4. Brett Holman’s avatar

      Brett Holman on 15 January 2011 at 2:50 pm

      I guess it depends on how you interpret the word 'depicts' in the caption... perhaps intentional ambiguity?

    5. joan larsen’s avatar

      joan larsen on 7 February 2011 at 4:18 pm

      Anyone read a book in my collection: The Zeppelin in Combat by Douglas Robinson? Or my book by Otto Gottberg: The siege of Tsungtau???

    6. Brett Holman’s avatar

      Brett Holman on 8 February 2011 at 10:15 pm

      I know Robinson's book only by reputation (which is high, though it's half a century old now). Haven't come across the other one.

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