The Railway

Not surprisingly, railway lines were targets. The bombs that fell at St Johns  and the common were both probably aimed at the railway line through Kenilworth, but I have yet to hear of an attempt to attack the station

I have been told, by two independent witnesses, that an armed train ran through Kenilworth, coming down the line from Berkswell. It carried a former naval gun; “When they let that go, it didn’t half make a bang”.

Other reports mention a regular ammunition train passing through Kenilworth that was on occasions attacked locally.

The railway system was used for the dispersion of vital commodities, one obvious example of this was the building of the  Ministry of Supply Stores  in Priory Road near to the station. At the Mill End siding complex, until the war used by Street’s the fellmongers, food warehousing was set up in 1940 by Laxon’s, Mr Laxon himself living in town.

In July 1940, the KUDC were asked by the Ministry of Mines if they could provide a site for a government stock of coal. A thousand tons was subsequently stored ‘at the tip’, this could have been either the Cherry Orchard or Whitemoor brickworks (both had railway sidings) as both had been used as a tipping site by this time