Notes: 1. The family lived in Cliff House Farm. The children Sylvia, aged 9; Ethel, aged 7; Margery, aged 5; William, aged 3, Sheila, aged 18 months were in bed upstairs whilst their parents were downstairs playing cards with guests. The RAF Stirling bomber took the top storey off, killing all the children. Those downstairs escaped unscathed.
2. This was the greatest civilian loss of life in the district.
3. The parents moved to farm at Shotley Bridge, then to Stannington. Later they moved to Fenrother. They had another child who was stillborn. They never got over the loss of their children. All the family are buried in a grave in Amble West Cemetery.
4. Hassall Homes, builders of the new estate, had no objection to the naming of the estate when they heard the story.
5. The estate is a couple of fields from the crash site.
6. The crash happened on December 1st 1943. The bomber, EH880 AA-J was taking part in Operation Gardening. They had been planting mines in Danish coastal waters. On returning to RAF Acklington, the aircraft undershot the runway and crashed into the farmhouse. The six crewmen who died were W/Off. G.J.S. Kerr ; Sgt. L.G. Copsey; Sgt. D.F. Wort; Sgt. R. Smith; F/S D.A. Holt; Sgt. G.W.T. Lucas. The one crew member who survived was Sgt. K. Hook. To read official report, see link below.
7. The crew who died in this crash are remembered on a plaque in St. John the Divine Church at Chevington. See C27.04.
8. The Times’ Newspaper, 03/12/1943:
Aircraft Crash on Farmhouse. Family of five young children killed. Five children – all their family – of Mr and Mrs W. Robson were killed when an Aircraft crashed into Cliff House, a small dairy farm near Amble, Northumberland, on Wednesday night. The children’s ages ranged from one to nine years. They were sleeping in an upstairs room. The mother and father, who with two friends Mr. and Mrs Rowell of Dilston (Terrace) Amble, were sitting in a downstairs room, were injured but not seriously.
One of the crew of the aircraft, a gunner, was saved by Mr. Rowell. Mr Rowell said last night: “We did not realize what had happened until the house collapsed above our heads. We managed to stand up, bruised and badly dazed, and, looking upward we saw the sky. Mrs Robson tried to make her way towards the stairs, which had been blown away. My wife called my attention to a burning object outside which was moving about. We rushed over and found it was a gunner with his clothes alight. Mr Rowell rolled the airman on the ground to extinguish the burning clothes. Although badly burned, the gunner was alive. The children’s partly charred bodies were recovered later.”
9. Stirling EH880 took off from RAF Mepal, Cambridgeshire at 15.16 hrs, joining 12 Halifaxes and 18 other Stirlings on a sea mine sowing mission off Denmark and the Frisian Islands. On the return home the aircraft was diverted to Acklington due to fog. At 22.00 hrs the aircraft, approaching from the north east descended to land, but due to fog they had misjudged their location by 11 miles and tragically flew into the upper floor of Cliff House Farm.
