Late in the 1944 wartime season at Lord's, a steel cable from a barrage balloon moored on the Nursery Ground broke loose in a wind and snagged the iconic Father Time weather-vane on top of the Grand Stand. The cable wrapped around the figure, brought it down and deposited Father Time among the front-row seats below. The most high-profile damage to Lord's during the Second World War, MCC's curators noted, came not from the Luftwaffe but from one of London's own air-defence balloons.
MCC had agreed in 1939 to make Lord's available to the RAF and the National Fire Service. The Nursery Ground was levelled for the balloon site; the practice ground for fire-engine parking. Cricket continued in front of the pavilion through every summer of the war.
By 1944 a 1,000lb bomb had already cratered the Nursery Ground (October 1940) and the V-1 'doodlebug' at the RAF v Army match (29 July 1944) had narrowly missed the playing area. Father Time's fall was the third significant damage event in five years.
Lord's had been requisitioned in 1939 as the RAF's No. 1 Aircrew Reception Centre. Volunteers and conscripts queued through the Long Room to be processed; St John's Wood was effectively a barracks. Part of the Nursery Ground was given over to 903 Squadron Balloon Barrage, whose hydrogen-filled balloons floated on cables several hundred feet up to deter low-flying German aircraft.
In an autumn gale (often dated to early September 1944, though MCC's archives are cautious about the exact day), one of the cables sheared and whipped across the ground. It snagged the Father Time weather-vane sculpted by Herbert Baker in 1926 — a 7ft Old Father Time stooped over a stumps-and-bails set — at the apex of the Grand Stand. The figure was wrenched off its mounting and dropped into the seating below. Maintenance staff salvaged it; it was restored by Baker's studio after the war and remounted.
1939 — Lord's requisitioned; balloon site established on Nursery Ground
Oct 1940 — 1,000lb bomb on Nursery Ground
29 Jul 1944 — V-1 doodlebug overhead during RAF v Army match
Late summer 1944 — barrage-balloon cable parts; Father Time pulled from Grand Stand
Post-war — Father Time restored and remounted
1926
Father Time sculpted by Herbert Baker, mounted on Grand Stand
1939
Lord's requisitioned; barrage balloon site on Nursery
1944
Cable parts; Father Time pulled down
1946
Father Time restored and remounted
1992
Moved to new Mound Stand
“The most high-profile damage to Lord's came not from the Luftwaffe but from a barrage balloon.”
Father Time was repaired by Baker's studio and re-installed atop the Grand Stand after the war. He was moved again, to the new Mound Stand, in 1992, and to a new perch on the Pavilion in 2017.
Cricket's archetypal wartime curiosity: Lord's most famous symbol felled not by enemy action but by friendly defences. A reminder that requisition, not bombing, did the most lasting damage to England's first-class venues.
The Father Time tale is a fixture of Lord's tour-guide patter. The barrage balloons remained on the Nursery Ground until 1945; the bomb crater was filled in for the 1946 season. Old Father Time still oversees the ground, now from the south end.
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