Welcome back to Londonist: Croydon Edit. Piloted by Londonist editor and Croydonian Will Noble, it's about all things in the borough of Croydon. And a reminder that paid subscribers get extras perks including the monthly Cronxicles roundup, informing you about what’s new in Croydon, and what’s happening in the month ahead.
If there’s one thing Croydon does well, it’s roads. But did you know that one of them was made from German WWI helmets? Well, sort of.
I’m going to preface this newsletter by saying that I found out about this strange tale from a British Newspaper Archive clipping/a British Pathe film on YouTube when researching my book Croydonopolis, and it’s been on my ‘to write’ list for a little while now (honest guv). By coincidence, the other day, Mark Felton posted a (great) video on YouTube about Croydon’s helmet road, which I’d also recommend you give a watch. It’s also been helpful in trying to make sense of the fragments of story I found. Although the whole episode still has its mysteries…
Right, on with the helmets!
The video (above) feels unsettling. Thanks to the grainy black and white footage, the cavalcade of gun carriages looks as though it’s being rolled over a field of skulls. They’re not skulls, they’re helmets. The helmets aren’t necessarily those of soldiers killed in the war either; they would likely have been handed over to Allied forces after victory.
It was March 1920, and 10,000 German helmets were being crushed flat to create a road for Croydon. Or so says the headline of the only ‘proper’ contemporaneous article I can find, published in the Globe. This show of helmet trampling wasn’t some grim (and slightly tardy) victory parade—it was an act of resourcefulness: “We are doing this,” explained an officer at the Salvage Depot/Gun Park on Mitcham Road, to the Globe, “because the ground here is clay and we can’t move the guns except by using caterpillar tractors. When a caterpillar tractor passes over the ground it leaves it like a quagmire.
“We needed something to bind the clay together, and that’s why we are using the tin-hats*.”
Hats like this were ten a penny at the end of the war, although there would have been plenty of souvenir hunters happy to pay a little for one to put on their mantelpiece. But the Salvage Yard (which was also full of various other captured/turned in war apparatuses including guns, ambulance wagons and pontoons, reasoned that flogging the helmets as trinkets wasn’t worth the administrative cost. They had a better idea.
Judging from the British Pathe reel, the helmets aren’t so much as being flattened, as studded into the ground to make for particularly lumpy cobblestones. So is this the road in its completed form? This is where things get nebulous. In his video, Mark Felton suggests that the newsreel might be a cheeky bit of posturing for the cameras, and that the helmets were later flattened or otherwise worked into the ground as foundations, before being covered over, and used in the construction of the Purley Way (built between 1919 and 1925)—one of Britain’s first bypasses.
This seems to be conferred by Rob Chester on The Great War (1914-1918) Forum: “My late Great Uncle told me that he remembered large numbers of helmets and other Great war bric-a-brac being used as hard core for the construction of the ‘Purley Way’ in Croydon.” A couple of other people have mentioned in the comments of Mark’s video that they heard rumours the Purley Way was built over thousands of German helmets.
Then again, the Purley Way is HUGE, and you’d surely need more than 10,000 helmets to cover the whole thing. The Globe article also clearly states that the Salvage Depot is on Mitcham Road. And judging from what that officer said, the helmets were being used primarily to ‘make a pathway’ for the German gun carriages etc. So could it be that the ‘road’ was nothing more than what we see in the video—a very temporary, very lumpy fix to transport heavy equipment in and out of the Salvage Depot itself?
“At some future day,” concludes the Globe article from 1920, “an enterprising citizen next century may them dig up and claim that he has come across an ancient Roman Army dump.” Alas, I can’t find anything in the newspaper archives about the helmets being excavated at a later date—or indeed anything else about them at all.
However, another person on The Great War (1914-1918) Forum does write: “The buildings at 675 Mitcham Road Croydon were built, I remember, on an old tramyard, and I remember also being told that when the foundations were being excavated they found 'hundreds' if not thousands of WW1 steel helmets.” Perhaps the helmets are long dug up. Although in that case, what happened to them? It’s all a bit of a head scratcher.
What’ve you heard about the German helmets? Are they under the Purley Way? Or were they dug up years ago? Maybe you’ve got one in your shed? Get involved in the comments!
*They weren’t tin in fact, but steel, known as Stahlhelm.
Competition time!
Here’s a giveaway for everyone—there’s a first AND second prize, namely:
First: A bunch of Croydon Spaceport merch, including the Ad Astra Per Croydon zine, stickers, postcards, prints and a copy of the brand new fold-out Croydon Spaceport historical map and guide (see above), plus Glad All Over: Confessions of a Crystal Palace Fan.
Second: A copy of the brand new fold-out Croydon Spaceport historical map and guide
Fancy winning? Simply email will@londonist.com with your address. The first two people who reach me will receive the goodies, sent by miniature rocket. Or second hand post, I haven’t decided yet.
If you’re not lucky enough to be a winner, I still highly recommend you browse the Croydon Spaceport merch; it’s brilliant and it’s hilarious. I wrote a piece on Ad Astra Per Croydon for Londonist.
My book, Croydonopolis: A Journey to the Greatest City That Never Was is now available to pre-order. Use the code CROYDON10 for a 10% discount from my publisher’s site. It’s also available at Croydon Waterstones.