Aston Webb façade of the V&A, Exhibition Road
Showing bomb damage still visible today

This photograph is likely to have been taken some time after the war but it shows how strong the blast had been. The V&A had to close for a few days to clear up the mess that had been left from the bomb. Most of the glass roofs were damaged and this was most worrying to the Director, Sir Eric Maclagan. The doors of the Museum's main entrance on Exhibition Road, at the time, the only one for the whole of the Museum were also ‘blown-in’ due to the blast.

Once the main damage had been rectified the stone blast holes were left since they were not affecting the structure of the building. In 1985 an American tourist contacted the V&A about the war damage asking why it had been left. Not long afterwards the V&A contacted David Kindersley, a calligrapher to do a tablet as a memorial. Kindersley thought that it would be better to use the stone itself rather than attaching something to the wall. After various attempts at the wording he managed to arrange the cutting of the stone around a bomb blast on one of the stones. It was finally finished in 1987 and can be seen on the right hand side of Exhibition Road entrance.