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One of the zeppelin raids on Croydon took place on 13 October 1915.   Soon after 11 o’clock, a listener in Croydon heard what he thought was “the syphoning of a street gas lamp, then what appeared to be the exhausting of steam through a nearby factory chimney, and then it seemed that a very heavy motor vehicle was drawing nearer up an adjacent street; only all the time, he had the impression that the sound was from the air.  A few seconds later, a flash from the sky, a sudden illumination of the whole neighbourhood and a deafening explosion and violent tremours of the ground”. “The noise of the explosion was like something that will not easily be forgotten – the crack of a thousand rifles and the clashing of myriad titanic symbols, all heard simultaneously.”

Three people were killed in Oval Road.  19 year-old electrician, Robert Arthur Thompson, heard the bombs and dashed out of no 57 into the street.  A bomb fragment struck him with terrific force, tearing off his arm.  21 year-old grocer Percy John Brookes ran out into the road from no 62 and a fragment of a bomb struck him in the stomach leaving him slumped against a wall.  Both died in hospital.  Dress maker’s assistant, Jane Miller, aged 50, lived at no 51, which was wrecked by a bomb.  She had rushed towards the cellar at the sound of the first bomb.  Her stepfather fought through the debris to find her, but when he discovered her she was already dead.    They were just three of the of the 90 people from the ECCO area that died as the result of enemy action in The Great War https://eastcroydon.org.uk/the-east-croydon-fallen-from-world-war-one/

The zepplins may have been aiming at the factories of Creed and Billie & Co who were engaged in war work on Cherry Orchard Road, but dropped the bombs a few seconds too late.

Two more bombs then exploded in Leslie Park Road, slicing off the back of no 42 and extensively damaging nos 33&34.  The next bomb struck “Glendalough” a house owned by Dr J H Thompson on the corner of Lower Addiscombe Road and Morland Road. He held his surgery in the block that now houses the Co-op. It was half demolished by bomb dropped from a zeppelin, but no one was injured. 

Information from

• Keatley Moore, H. & Berwick Sayers (eds.), W.C. 1920. Croydon and the Great War.  Croydon Central Library: Croydon p28-30. 
• Castle, I. 2018 Zeppelin Onslaught: the Forgotten Blitz 1914-15. Frontline Books  p260.