Another landmark passed!

Information from over 10,000 personnel record cards have now been input and are available to search via our online catalogue.

We are releasing the following Civil Defence personnel cards records today:
C TYR/1  Warden Service personnel cards D-E
C TYR/2  Control and Report Centre personnel cards L-Z
C TYR/3  Cyclist Messenger Corps personnel cards Mc-Z
C TYR/4/1  Fire Guard Section personnel cards-men ’A’ only
C TYR/9   Rescue Party personnel cards T-Z
C TYR/18/4  Hull Corporation Fire Watcher’s ‘A’-‘E’

Warden Service
Other records we are releasing today include material relating to the Warden Service:
C TYW/1 Warden Service Organisational Records, 1938-1952
C TYW/2 Warden Service Records, c.1938-1947
C TYW/3 Material relating to Warden Post G, District 7, 1938-1945
C TYW/4 Administrative index cards, c.1941-1948
C TYW/5 Informational posters, c.1939-1945
C TYW/6 Maps, c.1938-1945

Head Wardens of Central Division

The Warden Service of the City and County of Kingston Upon Hull was created as part of Civil Defence during the course of the Second World War. The Warden’s responsibilities included the reporting of incidents and giving assistance where necessary, pending the arrival of other services. The records we hold include organisational files, material relating to a specific Warden Post and index cards relating to fire-watching and air raid shelters and posts.


Air Raid Shelters
These records, created by the Town Clerk’s Department, include information regarding the location of communal air raid shelters and the names of owners/tenants in the streets/terraces that they served.
C TCY/4/1  Agreements for the Erection of Air Raid Shelters (Dec 1939-Feb 1941)
C TCY/4/2  Memorandum from the City Engineer to the Town Clerk regarding the Demolition of  Civil  Defence Structures (1946-1947)
C TCY/4/3  Lists of Communal Air Raid Shelters that were subsequently demolished and where the agreement entered into provided for a nominal single payment only (c. Jun 1941)
C TCY/4/4  List of Communal Air Raid Shelters that were subsequently demolished and where the no Agreement can be traced (c. Jun 1941)

Air Raid Shelter construction

You can find out more about the Second World War records on the History Centre website which includes the latest version of our Source Guide (PDF, 254kb).

And so it comes to an end…sort of

This is my final blog post, the National Cataloguing Grant has come to an end and so must the Second World War Cataloguing project.  Or at least my part in it.  Thanks to the enthusiasm of our volunteers, they will continue to keep numbering and indexing away at the personnel cards, so the amount of information available at the click of a mouse will keep increasing.

And with that, I can announce the release of the next batch of index cards.  The Warden Service at C TYR/1 are now searchable up to surnames starting with C.  The Control and Report Centre at C TYR/2 searchable up to surnames starting with K.  The Cyclist Messenger Corps at C TYR/3 searchable up to surnames starting with L.  The Rescue Service at C TYR/9 searchable up to surnames starting with S. 

We have also released some registers, which are not indexed, for the Warden Service, the Control and Report Centre and the Cyclist Messenger Corps. 

There will be more to come so please keep checking the History Centre website for further updates on the collection.

I doff my cap to all the staff and volunteers who have been a part of the project and to those who have given it the publicity the subject deserves.

Victoria.