Occupational hazard
John Martin Robinson is captivated by the stories behind 12 country houses during the Second World War
THIS is not a broad-brush history of the thousands of houses requisitioned during the Second World War, but a more intimate picture of a varied selection of places that saw ‘action’ between 1939 and 1945. The publishers call it a ‘secret’ history—a claim that the author does not make, as it is not that secret. Several books have been published on the same subject in recent years, ranging from studies of individual houses based on the memories of their participants to wider historical treatments underpinned by archival research. nevertheless, this is a welcome addition to the literature, engagingly written and covering a good selection of country houses. There is also much new material.
Julie Summers has done her research and the chapters are backed up with footnotes and a solid bibliography. There are also wonderfully evocative photographs. These range from fascinated evacuated children running alongside a motor mower on the lawns at Waddesdon and a student midwife washing a new baby in the wine cellar at Brocket hall, to the smoking ruins of Melford hall, burnt by its British Army occupants in 1942 and heroically rebuilt by Sir William hyde Parker after the war.
There are brilliant quotations from contemporary letters, including a marvel from the aged ettie Desborough to Winston Churchill objecting to an American hospital being built in the grounds of Panshanger, where they already had a secret RAF installation: ‘Dearest Winston, would you be such an angel as to glance at the enclosed letter. We have simply longed, all through, to consult you on the subject, but could not bear to add one featherweight to your burdens.’ It did the trick and the hospital was moved elsewhere.
The text concentrates on 12 principal properties and the uses/occupants for which they were adapted, ranging from a maternity hospital for expectant London mothers at Brocket hall (requisitioned in 1939), a nursery school at Waddesdon Manor, Mgr. Ronnie Knox and Assumption nuns and girls from Kensington Square at Aldenham, Malvern College (but not MI6) at Blenheim, a bank at Upton and a base for the Polish branch of the Special operations executive at Audley end to the paramilitary training bases in the West highlands, focusing on the Royal Marine Commandos base at Inverailort Castle. Some of this is familiar, but it is enlivened here with flashes of novel information. one of the bedrooms at Brocket was called the Ribbentrop Room—is it still? At Waddesdon, as well as nursery children in the manor, there were orphaned Jewish boys from Frankfurt in Cedar house in the village, where they were welcomed warmly; being naturally bright, many went on to Aylesbury Grammar School.
The book is given an interesting slant, in that there is more on the Poles and French and other europeans in exile than on the Americans, Australians and Canadians covered in similar studies. There is a whole chapter on edvard Beneš—the exiled president of Czechoslovakia— at Aston Abbotts Abbey in Buckinghamshire and how he got there via Putney.
The author is a social historian and approaches her subject from a personal, almost autobiographical slant, beginning in harrogate in search of her great-grandfather, harry. This approach helps to draw the reader into her exploration of a fascinating aspect of the story of the home Front in the Second World War. She has a good eye for detail: the soldiers from the American South, whose time in england was their first experience of snow; the surprise of the Texan parachutists billeted at Wollaton in nottingham where they found themselves sharing the house with a stuffed kangaroo, puma and gorilla; and the fact that the trade design of Mars Bars wrappers has not changed in nearly a century.
Altogether, this is a warmhearted and fascinating treatment of a very good story.
‘A bedroom at Brocket was called the Ribbentrop Room—is it still? ’