John Withall started his talk by telling us that he had been employed as a Ranger at Wakehurst Place in 1994. He had always been interested in history but when he asked what had happened at Wakehurst during the war he was told – nothing! Being like a red rag to a bull he started to delve into the history assisted by another Ranger, his current wife Veronica, who was with him.
Researching back to the 1914-18 War John came across the memoires of a boy gardener who at the age of 13/14 had told his father that he could hear the sound of thunder in the Wakehurst garden and, when his father eventually went to the valley with his son, he could also hear the big guns from the Somme. John Loder, son of the owner of Wakehurst was heavily involved in fighting in the war and was mentioned in despatches
The mansion had been bought by Sir Henry Price from Gerald Loder (later Lord Wakehurst) who had largely been responsible for creating the gardens over 33 years from 1903. Sir Henry had made his money from his creation of the ‘ready-made suit’ with the business known as The 50/- Tailor. (Fifty Shilling Tailor) Previous to this all suits were tailor made restricting their sale to the wealthy! It was Sir Henry Price who left Wakehurst to the National Trust in 1965 but it was Sir Henry and his wife Lady Eve Price who had set about refurbishing the Mansion which was suffering badly from neglect with Sir Henry even falling through the floor on occasions. They had just completed most of the work including re-roofing with Horsham tiles collected from all over the district, when they received a letter marked OHMS advising them that the Mansion was to be taken over for the War Effort and that they should move out!
It was Bernard Law Montgomery who was in charge when Wakehurst became the General HQ of the Canadian Army in the UK. He believed in discipline and on arriving found that many of the soldiers had their wives with them, sent them all home and toughened everyone up by making all ranks take part in cross country runs..
The fateful Dieppe raid of 1942 was planned at Wakehurst. For obvious reasons very little was shown to the public but the figures tell it all. There were 6100 men in all ranks with 4900 from Canada . 907 were killed and 2460 wounded. 1800 were taken prisoner and only 336 returned unharmed which may be accounted for by the fact that 2-300 hadn’t even landed on the beach. It was a disaster.
Knowing of the Dieppe disaster John and a group visited the war graves and found several names from Wakehurst as well as a stone for a Salvation Army lady driver of a tea wagon who had been killed by enemy fire from an aircraft. The list of Wakehurst killed used to hang in the hallway at Wakehurst but is now stored at Kew.
One picture was shown of King George VI taking the salute as the Canadian troops marched by outside the Mansion and another showed the ‘lockup’ used for what John called ‘naughty troops’ as it is today – still with bars on the windows.
It seems that small planes used to land at Wakehurst and that there was a Field Survey Company of the Royal Engineers whose task it was to produce the equivalent of Ordnance Survey maps of France and Germany from hundreds of photographs taken by planes flying over the enemy ground. These would then be supplied to the front line in the battle to help with manoeuvres.
In 1944 it was all change when the Canadians moved out and Wakehurst became the tactical HQ for some of the planning for ‘D’-day. It seems that by then there was a unit of ambulances that took over the car park and the rest of the ground was full of Nissan Huts and marquees. The fireplaces in the Mansion had been boarded up to stop the Canadian ‘woodsmen’ from cutting down the prize specimen trees in the park and burn the benches just to keep warm and the gardens were now out of bounds.
Lady Price reported that a V1 (Doodlebug) had landed in a tree at the end of North Drive and the brave Home Guard and ARP wardens had somehow removed it without incident.
Under the heading of ‘secrets’ John Withall told us about the Zero Radio Stations that had been hidden underground all over the country for communication in case of invasion. By 1944 Winston Churchill had ordered that all these Zero stations should be disbanded and the equipment destroyed. This had happened very widely but because all the people involved had signed the Official Secrets Act very little was known about them. They had been manned by women ATS officers who had been selected by Beatrice Temple, the niece of the Archbishop of Canterbury who later became the Mayor of Lewes. The chosen ones were posted to a Zero Station. The one at Wakehurst only survived the initial order to disband because it was used to contact the French Resistance. It was not until some time after the war that a gardener strimming a section of the garden fell through a trapdoor that the entrance was found again. This was not of interest to Kew at the time and so it was covered over and left until 2009 when the one man sent to investigate had to abandon the task due to a long period of wet weather.
Eventually a local man who had a camera on a pole was able to take photos that showed the interior of the tunnel-like structure flooded but otherwise empty of any equipment. Nearby embedded in a tree was found a switch that had been used to open the door and 5 nearby trees were found to have antennae embedded in their bark at the top.
The connection of the Women’s Land Army with Wakehurst was established when John was presented with a shoebox full of memorabilia collected by a lady called Constance Williams. This included her Land Army Certificate signed by Diana De La Warr and a letter from Dorothy Macmillan, shortly after taking up residence with her husband at 10 Downing Street, responding to a greeting and congratulations from Constance Williams whom she clearly remembered well.
John told us of the large POW camp close by with separate sections for Italians and Germans who were pressed into work ’digging for Britain’ at Wakehurst, of which no trace remains today except he surmised for descendants of those prisoners who remained in Britain after the war and became part of our multi-cultural country!
At the end of the war the Prices’ were able to come back to Wakehurst very soon. The property had been the first to be requisitioned and was the first to be returned.
In a final connection with wartime and Wakehurst, veterans of the Korean War of 1950 – 53 asked for a memorial Korean Fir to be planted. It carries purple coloured cones and can be seen in the area known as the Pinetum which lies to the north-east of the Himalayan Glade.
So, the next time you visit Wakehurst where seemingly nothing happened in wartime, remember – it did!
