In the early morning of December 25th 1944, a loud pulsating drone was heard over Sowerby and district, it was a very eerie sound and when the noise stopped it was almost deafening in its silence, but it was soon followed by a loud explosion that rattled all the windows in the village.

This was Sowerby’s first experience of German aerial bombardment. It was a V1 that had been launched from a bomber over the North Sea and was probably aimed at Manchester; apparently, they were notorious for not going the allotted distance, due to running out of fuel or veering off course, due to faulty navigation.

The one that dropped in Sowerby landed in a field on the north side of Little Toothill farm’s barn, which is situated on the right-hand side of Parkin Hall Lane approximately 75 yards past Parkin Hall Farm (on the left). It exploded in the field making a fair-sized crater, at the same time it took off a lot of the slates from the low barn, damaging the walls of both the farmhouse and the barn.

The farmer’s main complaint was that it had blown him out of bed! There was very little glass in the windows and the doors wouldn’t close properly. The farmer was a Mr Bottomley, known locally as Rowdy Bott.

There was an earlier invasion of Sowerby’s air space when all the air raid wardens were called out to put out some flares that had been dropped in Rawson wood by mistake, causing a minor conflagration.