One fisherman, two saints, and three politicians… by Carolyn Hughes

I have really been enjoying finding out about the villages of Hampshire’s Meon Valley, in order to share something of their history, introduce a few of the people associated with them, and reveal some of the treasures held within their buildings. Even though I know the area very well, it has nonetheless been both an eye-opener and a delight to discover all the things I didn’t know.

Taken from a map of Hampshire by William J Blaeu, Amsterdam, 1645, 

showing the cluster of villages in the upper reaches of the River Meon

But, today, I’m going to look at Droxford, one of the cluster of villages in the upper reaches of the River Meon.

The name Droxford is probably derived from ford and an old word ‘drocen’ meaning dry place. The settlement of Drokeneford was first mentioned in writing in the 9th century, when it was granted by Ecgberht (Egbert), King of Wessex, to Herefrith, the bishop of Winchester, “for the sustenance of the monks of Winchester”.

 St Swithun of Winchester from the 10th century 

Benedictional of St. Æthelwold, 

illuminated manuscript in the British Library.

More than a hundred years later, St Swithun was adopted as patron of Winchester’s restored cathedral church. Swithun had been Bishop of Winchester from October 853 until he died sometime between 862 and 865. In 971, Swithun’s body was transferred from its original burial place to Bishop Æthelwold’s new church building and, according to contemporary writers, numerous miracles surrounded the move. We’ve seen images of these miracles before, in the church at Corhampton, where the painting at the top of the south wall is said to depict stories from his life. One of them is the miracle of the eggs, where Swithun is inspecting a bridge being built over the River Itchen and, in the crowd that has gathered, an old woman is jostled and her eggs fall from her basket. But the miracle-working Swithun simply puts the broken eggs back together.

In 939, the then king, Æthelstan, granted 17 hides of Droxford land to his half-sister Eadburh. (A hide, traditionally taken to be 120 acres or 49 hectares, was intended to represent the amount of land sufficient to support a household.) Eadburh may well have benefitted financially from her brother’s generosity but, of course, she might not have spent much, if any, time in Droxford. Nonetheless, her story is interesting.

It was said that Eadburh’s father, King Edward, the elder son of King Alfred, set his three-year-old daughter a test, to discover if she was destined to live in the world or in a house of religion. He asked his little girl to choose between a display of rings and bracelets, and another of a chalice and gospel book. Apparently, the toddler chose the religious items and, as a consequence, was given, at that tender age of three, to the Benedictine nunnery at St Mary’s Abbey, Winchester (called Nunnaminster), which had been founded by her grandmother, Ealhswith, Alfred’s wife. There Eadburh remained as a nun, dying probably before the age of forty. Quite why she became a saint I am not at all clear…

In the Domesday Book, Drocheneford was said to be “always in (the demesnes of) the Church”, and was still held by the bishop for the support of the Winchester monks. In 1284 the manor passed wholly to the bishop, the monks renouncing “all right and claim which they have or shall have in the said manor, for ever”.

Not an owner of Droxford, but one of its more famous (or, almost, infamous) sons, was John de Drokensford (1260s?-1329), said to have been the son of the local squire. An effigy of a lady in the south side of Droxford church has been supposed to be that of his mother. John was the Keeper of the Wardrobe to King Edward I, and accompanied the king on some of his Scottish campaigns.

Effigy of John de Drokensford in Wells Cathedral

John’s services to the king were rewarded with very many ecclesiastical preferments, including rector of Droxford. He appears to have had five residences in Surrey and Kent, as well as Hampshire. In 1309 John became bishop of Bath and Wells, at the instigation of King Edward II. And, as bishop, he made neither Bath nor Wells his headquarters, but moved about constantly, attended apparently by a large retinue, living at one or other of the sixteen or more episcopal manor houses. He was, like many of his fellow bishops, a worldly man, and not always as scrupulous as he might have been in his own dealings.

Droxford continued to be held by the bishop of Winchester until 1551, when the new bishop, John Poynet, surrendered the whole hundred of Waltham, including Droxford manor, to the crown, as part of an agreement to reduce the income of the Winchester see, to the benefit of the government. The demesne of Droxford passed to William Paulet, the 1st Marquess of Winchester (c. 1483/1485 – 1572). William started out as a Catholic, but was quickly “persuaded” to see things the way the king, Henry VIII, saw them. Following the dissolution of the monasteries, William found himself rewarded with former Church properties, such as those owned by the bishop of Winchester.

Paulet was a political manipulator who had a long and successful career, serving Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. He was involved in the audience with the Pope to discuss Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, and he became a close associate of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and a friend of Thomas Cromwell.

William Paulet, 1st Marquess of Winchester, holding the white 

staff as a symbol of the office of Lord High Treasurer. 

1560s? National Portrait Gallery (London).

In 1535/36, he served as one of the judges at the trials of John Fisher, Sir Thomas More, and the alleged accomplices of Anne Boleyn. In 1547, he was an executor of the will of King Henry VIII. He was a political schemer and, in 1549, he supported the Earl of Warwick against the Duke of Somerset in their struggle for power in England during the minority of the child king, Edward VI. When Warwick succeeded, and became the new Lord President of the Council, he appointed William Paulet as Lord Treasurer. And when Warwick was created Duke of Northumberland in 1551, Paulet became the Marquess of Winchester and received Droxford, presumably as part of his reward!

It was said that Paulet and Northumberland “ruled the court” of the young king, as the two most prominent members of the Regency Council. William was still Lord Treasurer even after the death of Mary I in 1558, and continued in the service of Elizabeth I, although he must have been over seventy years of age. He retained his high positions, and was Speaker of the House of Lords in 1559 and 1566. Apparently, Queen Elizabeth once joked, “for, by my troth, if my lord treasurer were but a young man, I could find it in my heart to have him for a husband before any man in England.”

As already mentioned, William found himself able to shift his religious affiliation in order to win the favour of his monarch. Under Henry, he had already renounced his Catholicism and embraced Protestantism and, under Edward VI, he went so far as to persecute Roman Catholics. But, on the accession of the Catholic Mary, he “reconverted” and proceeded to persecute his former Protestant allies, while, on Elizabeth’s succession, he changed tack once again. All in all, he changed religious tack five times. Once, when asked how he managed to survive so many storms, not only unhurt, but rising all the while, Paulet answered: “By being a willow, not an oak.”

As for Droxford, William lost it again in 1558, when Queen Mary restored it to the bishopric, and the bishops then retained it until the Civil War. Then, the Long Parliament found a purchaser for Droxford in a Mr. Francis Allen, who gave £7,675 13s. 7d. for it. But, at the Restoration in 1660, the bishops recovered their possessions, and Droxford remained attached to the lands of the Winchester see for the next two hundred years.

But what of other famous associations with Droxford? I will mention two.

 Izaak Walton portrait by Jacob Huysmans,

c. 1672, National Portrait Gallery (London)

In the 17th century, the well-known fisherman and writer of The Compleat Angler, Izaak Walton, came to Droxford to fish in the River Meon, declaring it the best river in England for trout. His daughter Anne married William Hawkins, prebendary of Winchester Cathedral, who was instituted rector of Droxford in 1664, and held the office till his death in 1691.

Walton passed the last years of his life with his daughter and her husband, and a passage in his will says: “I also give unto my daughter all my books at Winchester and Droxford, and whatever in these two places are, or I can call mine.”

And the other famous man who spent a little time in Droxford was Sir Winston Churchill…

In 1903, a railway came to serve Droxford with the building of the Meon Valley Railway. In fact, although the station was called Droxford, it was actually sited almost in Soberton, at a little settlement called Brockbridge.

On the morning of 2nd June 1944, orders were telephoned along the length of the Meon Valley Railway that it was to be kept free of trains so that a special train could use the route without interruption. Troops surrounded Droxford railway station and its sidings, and the local post office was ordered to let no mail other than official business leave the village.

The special train stopped and parked up at Droxford station. In it were the prime minister of Britain, Sir Winston Churchill, and the South African prime minister, General Jan Smuts. The next day Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, and Ernest Bevin, the Minister of Labour, arrived by car. On 4th June, Dwight Eisenhower, the president of the United States, arrived from his nearby base at Southwick House, and they were joined by the prime ministers of Canada, New Zealand, and Rhodesia. They were there to discuss the D-Day invasion of France.

But, when the invasion was only days away, Charles de Gaulle, the Free French leader, had not yet been told of the Allies’ plans. The British cabinet was wary of communicating with the French government while they were in exile in Algeria, but also of a diplomatic incident if the invasion went ahead without French knowledge, so they decided to invite de Gaulle to come to England, to disclose the plans to him in person. When de Gaulle landed at RAF Northolt, he received a telegram from Churchill:

My dear General de Gaulle,
Welcome to these shores! Very great military events are about to take place. I should be glad if you could come to see me down here in my train, which is close to General Eisenhower’s Headquarters, bringing with you one or two of your party. General Eisenhower is looking forward to seeing you again and will explain to you the military position which is momentous and imminent. If you could be here by 1.30 p.m., I should be glad to give you déjeuner and we will then repair to General Eisenhower’s Headquarters. Let me have a telephone message early to know whether this is agreeable to you or not.

Although officially kept secret from local Droxford residents, it seems that Churchill had chosen the station as a secure base, because it was near the coast and to the Allied command centre at Southwick House. But there was some speculation that the site was also thought safe because it was overshadowed by beech trees, which obscured the view of the train, and because there was a deep cutting into which the train could be shunted if it came under attack.

Mackenzie King (PM Canada), Winston Churchill, Peter Fraser (PM New Zealand), Dwight Eisenhower,

Godfrey Huggins (PM Rhodesia) and Jan Smuts. Although this well-known photograph 

is generally credited as having been taken at Droxford, in fact, it seems unlikely. 

Anyway, at 6.58 pm on 5th June, Churchill’s train pulled out of Droxford station and returned to London. At 16 minutes past midnight the following morning, Allied troops attacked Pegasus Bridge and shortly thereafter the American airborne landings in Normandy began.

Churchill's secret army - a visit to Coleshill

In October I went on a guided walk put on by the National Trust at Coleshill in Oxfordshire. The house itself no longer exists, but during the Second World War, Coleshill was the top-secret General Headquarters (GHQ) of Churchill's 'secret army' . 

This was not a regular army, it was one made up of ordinary civilians who had volunteered to serve as Britain’s last line of defence in the event of a Nazi invasion.

Coleshill House in the Second World War

The secret army was formed in the dark days after the fall of France and the ‘miracle’ of Dunkirk. Most of the British Expeditionary Force had been saved, but the BEF had lost 68,000 soldiers during the French campaign and nearly all of its tanks, vehicles and equipment had been abandoned in France. German troops were massed a mere twenty-three miles away across the English Channel and Britain steeled itself for German invasion.

The Battle of Britain had not yet begun and the fate of Britain hung in the balance. Hitler had conceived 'Operation Sea Lion', by which he intended to land more than a quarter of a million troops, 60,000 horses, up to 40,000 motor vehicles and 650 tanks on British shores. His aim was to eliminate the British homeland as a base for operations against Germany.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill had made it clear that in the event of invasion surrender was not to be considered. Instead the people of Britain were to "defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender …”

Defensive measures against invasion were in place, such as barbed wire, anti-tank measures and mines on beaches. 

The country was divided up into defensive sectors by ‘stop lines’, continuous anti-tank obstacles – natural or man-made – which would block or hinder the progress of German armoured columns and allow an easier counter-attack by British defending forces. 

The stop lines were backed up with minefields, concrete pillboxes housing riflemen and machine gun emplacements. 

It is sobering to read Home Forces Operation Instruction No.3 (submitted to the War Cabinet on 25 June 1940), which states: “This system of stops and strong-points will prevent the enemy from running riot and tearing the guts out of the country as had happened in France and Belgium.”

Such measures were designed to assist regular soldiers and, at a pinch, the Home Guard, to defend the country. But what if the impossible happened, and the German invasion was successful, or even partially successful? How were the British people supposed to defend their island?  

In 1940 Britain had an advantage over the nations in Europe that had fallen so quickly to the German blitzkrieg - it had time to create a resistance movement in advance of an invasion.

Colonel Colin Gubbins, a British Intelligence Officer who was later the head of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), was asked to put in place a network of British resistance fighters to operate a resistance movement behind enemy lines. It was known by the deliberately vague title of Auxiliary Units and was comprised of civilian men and women (known as Auxiliers), who were usually in reserved occupations, but who were expected in the event of German invasion to engage in a guerrilla war. They would blow up bridges and trains, report on possible fifth column activity and discourage collaboration with the Germans. 

These were the men and women of Churchill’s secret army, and their training in sabotage and mayhem was given at Coleshill House.

There were two branches of the Auxiliary Units. The 4,000 ‘Special Duties’ Auxiliers were trained to be spies in their own country, to be the ‘eyes and ears’ of the organisation. They were people whose work allowed relatively free movement, such as doctors, district nurses and vicars. 

In the event of invasion they were expected to continue their normal lives, but to gain and communicate intelligence about the deployment of enemy forces. They learned how to identify vehicles, high-ranking officers and military units and objectives. Once they had gathered intelligence they were to prepare a short report and deposit it in a secret ‘letter box’ or 'dead letter drop'. 

These letter boxes were in unusual places, such as under rocks, in hollowed bricks or gate-posts or in holes in trees. At Coleshill I was shown examples of 'dead letter boxes'.

The reports would be collected by runners and taken to one of more than 200 civilian wireless operators, who would use secret radio transmitters to transmit the information to military headquarters. 

These radio transmitter might be hidden under the outside toilet on a farm, or in a secret compartment in a chicken shed. One such wireless, manned by the local vicar, was hidden under his church's altar; its antenna cable ran up the side of the bell tower. 

At Coleshill they had a reproduction secret wireless transmitter to show us. The dummy priest, who is a secret wireless operator, is secreted in a little room behind the far wall of this chicken shed.

 

 Auxiliary Unit Patrols were the second branch of the Auxiliers. They were the combat units who had been highly trained in guerrilla tactics. Each patrol was made up of a small group of six to eight men who operated on a ‘need to know’ basis as a self-contained cell, so that the members of one unit did not know the identity of any members of other units in their area.  

They were instructed to cause maximum disruption to the invading German forces by engaging in sabotage operations behind enemy lines, specifically to deny mobility to the attacker and to disrupt supply lines. Their prime targets were aircraft, fuel dumps, railway lines and depots, together with senior German officers.

The Patrols were provided with hideouts, known as operational bases (OBs) or 'funk holes', which were built in local woodland and stocked with plastic explosives, incendiary devices and ammunition, and with enough food to last for two weeks. 

Each OB had a camouflaged entrance and an emergency escape tunnel. 

The replica 'funk hole' at Coleshill is hidden beneath the soil, invisible until the top is lifted to reveal the entrance and a 30 foot ladder. 

Inside, the OB was fairly commodious, with four bunks (pulled up against the wall when not in use), a separate compartment for an Elsan toilet, a kitchen area and storage for tinned food and explosives. 

 

A real OB exists in Sussex, and is still in pretty good shape after 70-odd years.

Each OB had an emergency escape tunnel, leading to an exit some distance away.

 

This is an example of a 'how to blow up things' in a secret booklet given to Auxiliers, disguised as a Countryman's Diary.

As a sober note to such 'boys' own' adventures, it was accepted that, in the event of German invasion, the life expectancy of an Auxilier was only 10-14 days. The men anticipated being shot if captured. Many were determined not to be taken alive.

The Auxilier Unit Patrols were comprised of part-time volunteers, often recruited from the Home Guard. Former Boy Scouts, gamekeepers, foresters, hikers and mountaineers were preferred, because they knew their local area and had good survival skills. Game keepers were prized recruits as they were used to moving quietly through the countryside and they were used to killing things. All had to sign the Official Secrets Act and not even their families knew what they were trained for. As cover for their activities, they were given Home Guard uniforms.

Auxiliary Unit Patrol recruits were trained in secret at Coleshill, usually on a weekend so as to avoid interfering with their other work. Recruits were asked to check in at Highworth Post Office, where they were vetted by the postmistress, Mabel Stranks. After screening them she telephoned ‘Highworth 85’. The recruits were then blindfolded and taken by army transport on a circuitous route to Coleshill House. There they were taught close combat, self-defence, use of fire-arms, map reading, stealth, night fighting and camouflage techniques, and training in explosives, which were to be used for attacking enemy transport and supply lines. 

The men were also issued with sub-machine guns, hand guns and the deadly Fairbairn Sykes double-edged dagger.

The services of the Auxiliers were never needed in Britain. In September 1940, after defeat in the Battle of Britain and fearing the might of the British navy, Hitler postponed his invasion. Instead he turned his forces towards the Soviet Union. Operation Sea Lion was officially cancelled in March 1942.

What of the Auxiliers? They were stood down  in late 1944, when the tide of war had moved decisively in favour of the allies. Most of them slipped back quietly into their former lives. However, one group was determined to use the skills they had been trained in at Coleshill. These men were parachuted behind enemy lines for Operation Bullbasket in July 1944, but were captured in Verriers Forest near Poitiers and killed by lethal injection.

The Auxiliary Units had no official recognition. It is only now that we are aware of the desperate measures taken to prepare Britain for the expected invasion, and of the work of this ‘secret army.’

As I walked through the countryside following our guide, enjoying the beauty of the autumn colours, I thought about what had motivated those ordinary men and women in 1940 to volunteer for this secret army. 

Coleshill House burned down in 1952. A few years ago a small hedge was planted to mark the perimeter of the house and inside it were planted wildflowers and shrubs. 

I visited on a day of sunshine and shadow, when the flowers were in their last flush but still bright and beautiful. It is fitting, perhaps, that the headquarters of such a secret and chilling organisation should now be open to the sky and enclosing only flowers.

Additional information and photographs: http://www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk/