Barretts of Canterbury: 28-30 St. Peter's Street, Canterbury, Kent, CT1 2BL

By 1940 the vast majority of employees had joined or been conscripted into the services or war work (several went to Vickers at Woolwich). John Barrett joined the Ministry of Supply as a mechanisation inspector and moved with his family to Harpenden. Reg Barrett joined the Royal Signals and was posted to the Middle East. GRB was left to manage the business with Gerald Williams, the pre-war sales manager, joining the board. The shop remained open but the works were given over to repairing and maintaining motor bikes for the Army.

If most people had gone to war, the war came to Barretts in October 1940. The Kentish Gazette ran a (successful) campaign to raise £5000 to buy a Spitfire; to help this fund-raising project a Messerschmitt Me 109 that had crash landed intact was put on display in the Garage. In 10 days 3885 people saw it, raising £88.0s.1d for the fund.

The exhibition closed on 12th October. On Monday the 14th the Luftwaffe accidentally got its revenge. A lone raider came out of some low cloud and dropped 2 high explosive bombs on the High Street, causing several fatalities and much damage, and 2 incendiaries, one of which fell through the garage roof damaging two buses, some offices ... and the Me109!

The roof was repaired, but not the offices, and the war moved to the rest of Canterbury, Barretts surviving unscathed in the heavy Baedeker raids of June 1942.