Extensive damage was done to central Bradford when Nazi bombs fell on the city nearly 72 years ago.

Between 10.33pm on Sunday, August 31, 1940, and just after 3am the following morning, 116 bombs hit roads and buildings between Thornton Road and eastwards to Leeds Road.

Several buildings were gutted, including Lingards department store, at the junction of Kirkgate and Westgate, opposite where Millets now stands.

Part of the damage is shown in the photographs here, sent to us by T&A reader Robert Holland, who was about six months old when the store was bombed out.

He obtained the photographs from a friend, a Mrs Ambler, now in her eighties, who lives in Wrose, not far away from Mr Holland.

“It was a friend of hers, a policeman, who took the pictures. They were very small. My daughter Caroline, who used to work as a photographer on the Keighley News for four or five years in the 1980s, blew them up for me,” Mr Holland said.

On the back of one of the photographs the policeman-photographer noted that instead of the all-clear sounding after the bombing raid, handbells were rung in the streets of Bradford.

Lingards was thought to serve the best toasted teacakes and coffee in Bradford.

Among other buildings damaged or destroyed were the Tatler Cinema in Thornton Road, the Odeon cinema in Manchester Road, Kirkgate Chapel, Novello’s fashion shop, Robert’s dining saloon and shoe shop, Robert’s Pie Shop in Godwin Street (the front window was blown out), Rawson fruit market and the Leeds Road Baptist Church.

The brushmaking firm of George Bacon & Son, on John Street, was almost completely destroyed. Fixtures, fittings and equipment went up in smoke; but the safe was left intact – with the weekend’s takings still locked away inside.

A 30ft crater was made by one bomb which exploded on Hammerton Street.

On March 14, 1941, more Nazi bombers flew over Bradford. This time they dropped 29 high explosive bombs and a total of 556 incendiaries.

But by then, the Japanese had bombed part of the US fleet in Pearl Harbour and Hitler, who had already invaded the Soviet Union, had declared war on the United States.