Features / Park Street
50 years since two IRA bombs exploded in Bristol
In the run-up to Christmas exactly 50 years ago today, two IRA bombs exploded on Park Street on the same evening.
At 7.54pm on December 18 1974, a bomb exploded in a holdall that had been left outside Dixon’s photography shop; destroying a Ford Cortina parked outside and blowing out the windows of the Princes Theatre Club above the shop.
A second device exploded at 8.03pm hidden in bins ready to be collected on the other side of the road close to the Kenneth Harris hearing aid shop, shattering windows up and down the street.
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Nobody was killed but more than a dozen people were injured in the dual blasts.
Gas engineer Martin Jones was among those eating inside Wimpy, now the site of Toro Chinese restaurant on the corner of Park Street and Park Street Avenue.
“Suddenly there was this enormous bang,” Jones told the Evening Post. “Glass and debris was everywhere. It went right inside the restaurant where I was sitting.
“I saw this one chap get hurt. He must have been walking down one side of the street. He got hit in the head by flying glass.
“Everybody in the Wimpy was showered. One couple and their young child missed it by seconds. They’d just got up to pay their bill when the window blew in.”
Before the first bomb, a man with an Irish accent had phoned up Bridewell police station to warn that a bomb would explode on Park Street in the next 20 to 30 minutes.
The detonation of two bombs was part of a new tactic known as a “come-on”, targeting emergency services personnel attending the first explosion with a second bomb exploding shortly afterwards.
Inspector Robert Crocker was in charge of the original search for the first bomb and was caught up in the second bombs explosion.
“I had just crossed the road when the explosion went off and just swept me off my feet,” he told the Evening Post.
“I wasn’t hurt, but there was still a ringing in my ears an hour after the blast.”
Nobody was ever found responsible for the bombings on Park Street, which were part of a sustained bombing campaign by the IRA in cities on the mainland.
The attacks on Bristol came less than a month after the Birmingham pub bombings on November 21 1974, when two bombs in two pubs killed 21 people.
Main photo: Martin Booth
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