"VISITORS to Chard Museum this year will be able to step back in time to the Second World War with the creation of an Anderson Shelter in the grounds. Named after the then Home Secretary, Sir John Anderson, it became the best known air raid shelter during the war. The shelters, built of curved sheets of corrugated steel, half buried in the ground with at least 15in of earth heaped on top. Ideally the entrance was protected by an earthen blast wall. Chard Museum chairman David Ricketts said: “They could hold up to six people and were given free to low income families. By the outbreak of war in 1939 more than a million of these shelters had been installed in private gardens and by the time of the Blitz in 1940 more than 2.25m families had Anderson shelters in their gardens.”" Visitors to Chard Museum experience Anderson Shelter (From This is The West Country)
It seems to be an invariable rule that no public statement about WW2 is ever quite accurate. The statement that Anderson shelters were "given free to low income families" is misleading. They were made available to all households in areas deemed at risk of bombing, subject to payment of 5s, which could be remitted in necessitous cases. The very poorest families had no gardens in which to erect an 'Anderson'. "Had been installed" is also misleading. It was the responsibility of each household to actually erect the shelter, whether by themselves, by forming a team with neighbours for communal erection, or paying someone.
