There were at least four public air raid shelters built in the park to protect local residents from the Blitz. They were cut into the ground and covered over with concrete slabs and earth. One very large shelter, able to accommodate more than 1,000 people, remains intact on the park’s southern slopes although it is not publicly accessible.
On the night of 21st – 22nd April 1941, the air raid shelter near Inverdene suffered a direct hit from a German bomb with the tragic loss of nine lives. Brian Searle was a young schoolboy at the time and among those in the shelter when the bomb exploded. He provided this first-hand account of the event in 2005 and died aged 89 in 2024.
The entrance to the Inverdene air raid shelter was uncovered in 2011 when a new sewer was being laid and the associated installation is now where the shelter used to be. In 2021, a commemorative plaque was erected on the site and it bears the names of those who lost their lives.
