The Abbey End air raid saw 25 people killed after a stray bomb was dropped on the Warwickshire town in November 1940Coventry burned in November 1940 as Nazi war planes dropped bomb after bomb on an industrial powerhouse. The city became known for the damage it suffered during the Blitz, with buildings demolished and civilians killed in the onslaught.
The city was a terrifying place to be at night, and many residents made journeys outside of the city to try and make themselves and their families safe. Kenilworth was one such place Coventry residents flocked to, with a nightly exodus of people fleeing the city and German bombs.
But just days after the devastation which saw Coventry Cathedral bombed, a stray raid dropped a landmine in Kenilworth. It is not known why. Tragically, 16 Coventry people who had fled to the safety of Kenilworth died while taking shelter with friends and relatives over the border, as did eight residents.
The Abbey End bombing became well known in the Warwickshire town. But in Coventry it has stayed firmly in the shadow of bigger air raids which destroyed the majority of medieval Coventry.
Robin Leach is a Kenilworth historian who has been writing about the town's history for over thirty years. We spoke with him to find out about the tragic incident.
"We had several bombing raids through Kenilworth," Robin told CoventryLive. "One of them was on the night of the Coventry Blitz, November 14, where one Coventry person died in Kenilworth.
"Then on November 21 the main attack that night was actually on Birmingham. Why this one aircraft left the Birmingham attack and came this way we don't know. It's something that's never really been discovered. It might have been a deliberate attempt at a separate attack.
"It's unlikely Kenilworth was the target because bombs dropped on Leamington at a similar time was quite a big target for its industry and of course, Coventry as well.
"They come from the southwest over Dorset and it seems to have left the main attack on Birmingham, seems to have branched off from the main attack around Stratford and dropped two bombs in Kenilworth. One was in open fields near the cemetery, and second one landed at Abbey End.
"We had some small industries but not the big ones like Coventry and Leamington had so they were probably just to terrorise or accidents. Maybe air crews just dropping their bombs at the earliest opportunity and fleeing. Or they got nervous or jittery. We just don't know.
On November 21, 25 people died from the bomb - 16 of them were from Coventry, people who earlier in the day had made a move from their homes in the city in a bid to stay safe. As a sad piece of twisted irony, had they stayed in the hometown that night they wouldn't have died.
The people who died ranged in ages between teenagers and people in their 60s. Many of them were family or knew each other. One was a soldier on leave due to the birth of a child. You can see a list of the people above or online here.
The Globe Hotel is generally associated with the incident, but Robin says of 70 people staying there only three of them died - the rest were elsewhere on the street. But how did so many people from the city end up in a neighbouring town?
"When the air raids started people just started leaving Coventry at night to escape it," Robin explains. "This was a week after the Blitz, of course. Some that came were people that lost their houses anyway, so they came over to Kenilworth and a lot of them stayed with friends and relatives.
"The Globe Hotel publican was a Coventry person that only taken over the pub a few weeks before so a lot of people knew him and headed for the pub because he had a large room at the back.
"So people just left Coventry in their thousands. Every night - literally in their thousands.
"Every night they would queue to get into Kenilworth. I've heard stories of queues of cars coming into Kenilworth. One family of eight used to walk about seven or eight miles every night, from the other side of Coventry to Kenilworth.
"People used to push prams with belongings in, they used to bring their cats and dogs and budgies in cages and things like that. It was a proper Exodus every night."
Robin has fought hard to have those who have died remembered, both through his own work as well as campaigns for memorials in the town.
He said: "It's the same with all wars we commemorate, sometimes the civilians are overlooked. Everybody has war memorials to their fallen soldiers and quite right too, but often civilians are overlooked.
"The Abbey End Civilian Memorial was put in place in about 1995 but with no names and they were added in 2020, the 80th anniversary. The grave of the ‘unknown souls’ was not marked until 2016; it contains an unknown man (most probably from Coventry and thus likely to be recorded as one of those missing) and all that was found of two Kenilworth victims who were closest to the explosion.
"The anniversary is now marked every year by a small ceremony on the correct day, all are welcome and we do get relatives come from Coventry; all three of these, the ceremony, gravestone and nameplate were the result of a campaign I carried out over a number of years."
Robin's book, World War 2 Comes to Kenilworth, is out now. Find out more about it
here. He will make a personal appearance at Kenilworth Books on Talisman Square on July 9, find out more
here. Robin is also keen to hear from relatives of those who lost their lives, contact can be made via his website.