VE-Day reminded one Huddersfield village about its V1 Day.

For just months earlier the only V1 German flying rocket to hit our area landed in Grange Moor – and people were exceptionally lucky to escape with their lives as it caused extensive damage.

The rocket landed in the early morning of Christmas Eve, 1944, exploding in a field at Dumb Steeple Farm just 100 yards from Denby Lane in Grange Moor.

It left a crater 33ft in diameter and around 5ft deep.

About 130 houses, the village church, the school, the Methodist chapel, the working men’s club and the only pub in the village, the New Inn, were all damaged, but no-one was hurt.

One villager said: “Had the bomb travelled another 80 yards or so half the village must have been wiped out.”

Daniel Wood and his wife were sleeping in a farmhouse 80 yards from where the bomb landed.

Mr Wood said at the time: “We had a miraculous escape. There was a deafening crash, our ceiling came down, the roof lifted, the windows were blown in and the door was blown off but we were not scratched. A chest of drawers between the window and the bed saved us from having our heads cut off when the glass was flung across the room.”

The Examiner reported: “There was hardly a house in Grange Moor where something of this sort did not happen. Ceilings came down, windows came in, slates were flung off the roof and people were thrown out of bed, but no-one was hurt.”

An odd tale came from the New Inn. A lady who was staying there had left her false teeth in a glass of water by the bedside.

The glass was smashed and so were the teeth. A handyman in the house spent almost the whole of Christmas Eve trying to repair the teeth with fuse wire and the lady ended up with a makeshift pair to munch the Christmas turkey.