Many new blocks of flats come with communal features to attract buyers, but an air raid shelter able to hold 48 people is rarely one of them. In 1938, the builders of a new residential block of flats in Mortlake, South West London, must have sensed which way world affairs were going, because they decided to build just such a shelter under the lawn of St Leonard’s Court. The architect, F.G. Fox, was prescient: the shelter was soon in active service as the Blitz saw London bombed nightly, with railway…
