MORE than 50 years after the end of the Second World War a slice of shrapnel from a German wartime parachute bomb which dropped over Longton Marsh has been donated to South Ribble Museum and Exhibition Centre.

Retired Leyland DAF engineer Robert Grandison was a young lad of nine or ten when the November air raid occurred during the early years of the war.

Robert, who was a pupil at Longton Council School, in School Lane, Hutton, during the war, remembers the day the bomb dropped.

He said: "The planes used to go over Preston en route to Manchester and Liverpool, but if there was one which used to always lag behind the rest, if anything was going to drop, it made a big droning noise.

"I was about nine or ten and was in bed when the bombs dropped. I didn't hear the first but I remember walking to the air raid shelter near our house when the second went and caused a great big explosion.

"The day after their were pieces of shrapnel scattered all over the place and some near our home in Briers Grange Lane, in Hutton.

"I remember when I was going to school that day, I saw a piece of silk green parachute near Longton Brook, which was really icy in the cold weather.

"After having the shrapnel in my workshop for many years I thought it would be of interest to the museum and in a place where other people could see it."

The shrapnel can be viewed at the Museum and Exhibition Centre, on Church Road, Leyland.

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