In the frosty months of 1954, a six-year-old boy named Benny Merrell became an unlikely entrepreneur on the streets of West London. Like many families of the time, his household lived modestly in the long shadow of World War II, when fuel was still scarce and every penny stretched thin. Benny, with the resourcefulness only children seem to possess, discovered a way to earn pocket money while also helping his neighbors keep warm.
What he stumbled upon wasn’t ordinary firewood—it was a hidden piece of London’s history.
The Strange Roads of London
Benny gathered his stock from an unlikely source: the very roads beneath his feet. For decades, sections of Shirland Road and other parts of London had been paved not with stone or asphalt, but with wooden blocks soaked in tar. These “wood block roads” were once a common sight across Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Why wood? Because the world of travel was once ruled by the clattering wheels of horse-drawn carriages. Iron rims striking stone created a deafening racket, echoing through the narrow streets of European cities. Wooden blocks, especially when tarred for durability, dulled the noise and offered a smoother ride. They were cheaper to install than stone, easier to replace, and quieter than cobblestones.
But while wooden streets made sense in the horse-and-carriage age, they carried a hidden danger. The very tar that preserved them also turned them into tinderboxes.
When Roads Caught Fire
This weakness revealed itself most tragically during World War II. In German cities like Hamburg and Dresden, firebombing raids turned entire neighborhoods into infernos. Once ignited, the tar-soaked wooden roads didn’t just burn—they roared like rivers of flame, spreading fire faster and farther. Streets designed to quiet horses became highways of destruction, adding fuel to the firestorms that consumed entire districts.
London itself had suffered enough from the Blitz, though much of its wooden paving had already begun to vanish by the 1940s as automobiles took over and asphalt became the norm. Still, remnants of these bygone roads lingered in hidden corners of the city, waiting to be torn up and forgotten.
Benny’s Sharp Eye
By the winter of 1954, those roads had become relics—but for little Benny, they meant survival and opportunity. Each tarred wooden block he pried loose or scavenged was highly flammable, the perfect fire starter in a world where coal and gas were expensive luxuries for working families.
Neighbors welcomed him at their doors with coins in hand, grateful for the bundles of fuel he carried. To them, Benny was not just a boy with firewood—he was a lifeline during long, bitter nights when the hearth was the center of the home.
His business was small, but it burned brightly, just like the blocks he sold.
The Echo of the Past
Today, London’s wooden streets are gone, erased by progress and modernization. Few who walk Shirland Road would ever guess it was once paved with tarred blocks that whispered with the wheels of carriages and, in darker times, held the potential for fiery devastation.
For Benny, those wooden blocks were a childhood hustle, a way to bring warmth to his home and his neighbors. For history, they stand as a haunting reminder: that even something as ordinary as the road beneath your feet can hold both comfort and catastrophe within it.
The streets may have been paved over, but their story still burns.