During the night of 28 November 1940 approximately 300 people were tightly packed into the shelter in the basement of the Ernest Brown Junior Instructional Center in Durning Road, Edge Hill. It was the boiler room, chosen because it had a reinforced ceiling with metal girders running across it. A parachute mine hit the three-storey building, it collapsed into the shelter below, crushing many of its occupants. If that scenario were not bad enough the situation was exacerbated when boiling water from the central heating system poured into the basement, and at the same time gas pipes fractured. More than 160 men, women and children were killed, many were buried alive and The horror devastated the tight-knit community around Edge Lane. One local family, the Lucas's lost four children in the tragedy leaving their bereaved mother unable to speak for six months afterwards. It took two days to pull the bodies out from the shelter and in the end, for fear of disease, the remaining bodies that could not be recovered were covered with lime and the basement was sealed.
