Secret lair of the British resistance

**Kyt** · 10-10-2008, 01:53 PM

Property in Suffolk: Secret lair of the British resistance - Telegraph

A country home in deepest Suffolk was at the heart of plans to combat a wartime Nazi invasion, reveals Caroline McGhie

While writers and politicians have imagined what would have happened if the Germans had invaded Britain in the Second World War, Jeff and Jenny Montague have a better idea than almost anyone. Their house, a cream and green haven of Englishness deep in the Suffolk countryside, was the nerve centre of what would have formed an underground network of resistance fighters. Naturally, the project was wrapped in utter secrecy.

So hush-hush was it, indeed, that the story was suppressed by the Official Secrets Act for 50 years. "We had no idea when we bought the house in 1991," says Jenny. "We knew it had been requisitioned by the Army during the war, and we used to joke about the staircase being so worn because of the hobnail boots. But we didn't really know anything."

In 1994, out of the blue, a man called Arthur Gabbitas rang and told her the truth. "I was absolutely amazed by it, quite taken aback," she says. "He said it was so secret that people almost didn't believe what went on here. I felt then that I became a caretaker of the story. He sent me lots of information and wanted to visit." But on the day he came, in 1997, she was away. Later, when the parish council asked her to put together the story for the village, she sought his advice and found he had died. "I truly became the caretaker then," she says. "I never did find out what his role was."

It was the activities at Bachelors Hall, Hundon, to which Winston Churchill was alluding in his great "we will fight them on the beaches" speech. In the auxiliary units, as these covert groups were known, there were personnel selected for their knowledge of the local area and high standard of physical fitness (doctors, gamekeepers, wildfowlers), and a second group who worked to establish a radio network, 43 of whom were women from the Auxiliary Territorial Service.

"It was extraordinary really," says Jenny. "These women were asked to report for an interview in, of all places, the public lounge on the fourth floor of Harrods." They were interviewed by a woman in a tartan skirt called Beatrice Temple, who was the niece of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

"They were called the ‘secret sweeties'. They were asked to catch a train to Haverhill, cross the road and stand by the Rose & Crown. They had to wait to be picked up by an Army car with the number 490 on its wing, and taken to this house."

It is much like a scene from Sebastian Faulks's novel Charlotte Gray - though she was trained to be dropped behind enemy lines in France to work alongside the French Resistance. The plan to build a British Resistance was just as serious. If an invasion had taken place and their work been uncovered, they would have been shot.

"I feel privileged to have lived in a house which played such a part," says Jenny. "These were such courageous acts and so anonymous - some wives thought that their men were away having affairs."

A network of radio outstations was created. One was at the top of a folly in Brocklesby Park in Lincolnshire; another was set beneath the wooden seat (together with bucket and contents) of a chicken farmer's outside lavatory near Axminster. There were 125 outstations, 78 sub-stations and 3,250 civilians involved in gathering intelligence.

Dug-outs were created with caches of ammunition and food, while early plastic explosives and guerrilla tactics were studied. "There isn't much left of that time because it was all disguised," says Jenny. "We know that soldiers were billeted in the coach-house, which had no heating or luxuries. Above it was a pigeon loft - it is possible that they were training carrier pigeons there."

The grounds are currently given over largely to the 10 horses looked after by the Montagues' daughter, Sadie.

Bachelors Hall still exudes a pre-war tranquillity. Surrounded by its own land, it is invisible to outsiders, with wisteria winding around the loggia......"

Further echoes of wartime Britain sound elsewhere. Saltmarsh, on the Beaulieu estate, Hampshire, was commandeered by the Special Operations Executive (SOE), otherwise known as the "Secret Army". It was known as the "finishing school" for the SOE, whose task was to forge links with resistance movements across Europe.