What's happening at Hampton Cottage, 64 Church Street, Leatherhead KT22 8DP

Saturday, 3 October 2020

NEW VOLUNTEERS NEEDED URGENTLY TO KEEP THE SOCIETY GOING AFTER NEARLY 75 YEARS

The historic photo above recalls a Leatherhead Parish Church outing more than a century ago. It shows an entirely different world from that we know today. This is what local history is all about.

But now, nearly 75 years after it was established in the aftermath of World War 2, Leatherhead & District Local History Society faces an existential crisis. The last of its founders, Stephen Fortescue, died this summer aged 99 and other major figures from more recent years have also passed on. The inevitable movement of time also coincides with a virus pandemic that has forced temporary closure of its Museum and the replacement of monthly meetings at the Letherhead Institute with lectures accessible only online. Guided tours have already gone and outlets for the book publishing arm are reduced to one shop each in Bookham and Ashtead. 

Although a registered charity, the Society has so many vacancies among its essential officers that it faces being wound up unless new volunteers can be found among the wider public. This would be a major blow for continuing historical awareness of this part of Surrey. Leatherhead Museum, located in the 17th century Hampton Cottage in Church Street, would have to operate on its own whenever it did re-open and a Society that once attracted many hundreds of members would itself become a historical footnote. 

The L&DLHS was born on 16 October 1946 after local members of the Surrey Archaeological Society decided to encourage preservation of ancient buildings and countryside in this area. Since then, the L&DLHS has provided a research service for the benefit of all  residents and visitors keen to learn about local life, both in the recent and more distant past. 

Leatherhead Museum was purchased and has been run by the Society since 1979. Tours and lectures were accompanied by the annual Proceedings, an academic journal containing detailed research studies of the district, and a quarterly Newsletter which developed into a 40-page A5 magazine. The Society website offers an enormous range of historical archive material including many oral history recorded interviews with voices spanning more than a century. Photographs, maps and text documents date back much further.

Yet all may not be lost if a few volunteers can be found to handle the Society's records and archives, book sales. A new Chairman and Secretary will be needed in the next twelve months. 

To help, please contact John Rowley at chairman@leatherheadhistory.org 

 



Saturday, 19 September 2020

THE LATE LINDA HEATH REMEMBERED


After consulting the Friends of Leatherhead Museum Committee, Peter Humphreys and Duncan Macfarlane, managers of the Museum at Hampton Cottage, reluctantly decided it should remain closed to the public until 2021 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Museum was due to open as usual in the spring after its normal winter shutdown but the lockdown overtook this. The Friends of the Museum working group was also suspended with only essential checks and gardening taking place. The garden and the new wellhead will not therefore now be on public view before next year.

Volunteer Dorothy Stapleton has been working on a new 1960s display in the former Hollis Room and the planned John Ainley art exhibition has been postponed. A new plaque commemorating the late Linda Heath, shown above, will also be on show from 2021. 

There are two main reasons for the continuing closure. First is the small size of the Museum rooms. Social distancing and hand-washing needs  would be difficult to apply and there is also a lack of storage space. Second are the ages of the volunteer stewards, mostly above that recommended for continuing protective isolation against Coronavirus. Dorking Museum also decided to remain closed until next year.

The new plaque will be installed at the Museum in memory of Linda Heath, former L&DLHS Chairman and later President. It is nine inches in diameter and in cast aluminium.

Linda joined the Executive Committee in 1986. She served as  Society Chairman 1989-1996 and President 2002-2007. She was a Museum steward for many years, gave many talks and wrote books on the Society’s behalf. She and her husband lived in the Leatherhead district from the 1960s. As well the L&DLHS she was also active in many other local organisations including the Leatherhead Parish Church and the Leatherhead Community Association. She left the Society a legacy of £40,000 on her death in 2013.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

Tuesday, 25 August 2020

OBITUARY: STEPHEN FORTESCUE (1921-2020)

 


Stephen Fortescue, solicitor, historian, author, campaigner, local politician and last surviving founder of our Society, died peacefully on 8 August age 99 in Devon

Born 17 July 1921 in Streatham, south London, the son of a solicitor, he spent his earliest years there. In 1938 his parents moved to Halfway House, Childs Hall Road, Great Bookham. Opposite was an old orchard which his father bought and had a house built, Pond Meadow, Preston Cross. They moved in on 20 December 1939. Stephen would remain in the area for decades.  

He qualified as a solicitor in 1946 and joined both the Surrey Archaeological Society and the Leatherhead and District Countryside Protection Society. He was invited to join the Committee of the latter and supported the formation of a local history and archaeological society. This was constituted on 16 October 1946 as the Leatherhead & District Local History Society. Stephen became treasurer and remained in that role until 1966. He would later become Chairman 1974-1980 and President 1990-1996.

During his chairmanship, the Society reached membership of 350. To encourage further growth he investigated buying Hampton Cottage in Church Road, Leatherhead as a museum. In 1978 it came on the market and he negotiated a purchase price of £7000. A client advanced the full amount  to be repaid after 20 years but later refused repayment. Hampton Cottage was refurbished and Stephen arranged for the Lord Lieutenant of Surrey to open the Museum formally in 1979.

He was well known in the local community as a property owner as well as running his legal practice. In 1959, as a committee member of the Bookham Residents Association, he was asked to stand for Leatherhead Urban District Council as an independent. He was subsequently elected to four council committees and in 1964 became Vice-Chairman of the Council itself, holding the office for two years before taking over as Chairman in 1966.

In the 1960s he backed the project to build a new theatre on the site of Leatherhead’s Crescent Cinema. Leatherhead Council agreed a grant of £10,000 and Stephen handed over the first instalment in 1968. He became a theatre trustee and was active in fund-raising for what became the Thorndike and later Leatherhead Theatre.

Stephen retired in 1986 but never gave up many voluntary activities. A Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, in the 1970s he wrote a string of detailed local history books on Bookham and the vicinity which now provide a crucial source for researchers. He was also a keen supporter of The Children’s Society, founded by his grandfather, his namesake. His first wife Mary, died in 1991 and was buried at St Nicolas Church, Great Bookham. He later remarried and lived very happily with Henrietta in Awliscombe, Devon. He was a much loved father to Ann and Stephen, grandfather to Alex and Vicky, and step-father to Stephen and Adrian.


Thursday, 2 July 2020

LEATHERHEAD MUSEUM TO REMAIN CLOSED DUE TO CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC. REOPENING 2021





After consulting the Friends Committee, Peter Humphreys and Duncan Macfarlane, the managers of Leatherhead Museum at Hampton Cottage, Church Street, have  reluctantly decided that it should remain closed to the public until 2021 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Museum was due to open as usual in the spring after its winter shutdown but the lockdown overtook this. The Friends of the Museum working group has also been suspended with only essential checks and gardening taking place. The garden and the new wellhead will not now be on public view before next year.

Volunteer Dorothy Stapleton has been working on a new 1960s display in the former Hollis Room and the planned John Ainley art exhibition has been postponed. The new plaque commemorating Linda Heath - see picture - will also be on show from 2021. 

There are two main reasons for the continuing closure. First is the small size of the Museum, located within a 17th century cottage. Social distancing and hand-washing requirements would be difficult to apply and there is also a lack of storage space. Second is the age of many volunteer stewards, most of whom are above the age recommended for continuing protection against Coronavirus. Dorking Museum has also decided to remain closed until next year.

The plaque shown above will be installed at the Museum in memory of Linda Heath, former L&DLHS Chairman and later President. It is nine inches in diameter and in cast aluminium.
  
Linda joined the Executive Committee in 1986. She served as  Society Chairman 1989-1996 and President 2002-2007. She was a Museum steward for many years, gave many talks and wrote books on the Society’s behalf. She and her husband lived in the Leatherhead district from the 1960s. As well the L&DLHS she was also active in many other local organisations including the Leatherhead Parish Church and the Leatherhead Community Association. She left the Society a legacy of £40,000 on her death in 2013.









Monday, 1 June 2020

ZOOM LOCKDOWN LECTURE ON THE CODE BREAKER OF TWO WORLD WARS




Using the Zoom web-conference system, on Monday 8 June, L&DLHS Chairman John DLJohn Rowley will be giving a 45-minute long lockdown lecture on Commander Alastair Guthrie Denniston, CBE, CMG (1890-1961), founder of the Bletchley Park code breaking unit and long time Ashtead resident. It will start at 7.15pm for 7.30pm. Go to the Surrey History Meetup website for instructions on how to join the talk.

Denniston - known as AGD - was a successful code breaker in both world wars. At the start of World War 2 he created the team at Bletchley Park, recruiting mathematicians such as Alan Turing to develop electronic encryption systems such as Enigma. Denniston
and his family lived in Ashtead from 1937 to 1947. A follow-up talk on Turing himself will be given  on  29 June.

Zoom software is available for Windows PCs, Macs, Apple phones and Android devices from 
https://zoom.us/download. Over 70 people took part in a recent experimental talk by L&DLHS member Simon Ritchie on Industrial Archaeology Hiding in Plain Sight - Ordnance Survey Trig Points. Simon is organising a series of lockdown lectures on behalf of local history groups including those in both Leatherhead and Dorking.


Monday, 16 March 2020

OUR RESPONSE TO THE CORONAVIRUS EMERGENCY


ANNOUNCEMENT BY THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
OF THE LEATHERHEAD & DISTRICT LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY

In view of the Covid-19 virus outbreak and its potential impact on our membership makeup, the Society has decided to cease our open activities for the time being. We are unable to suggest for how long this will be.

Our Annual General Meeting and talk on 20 March:
The AGM is now postponed to a date yet to be confirmed. If circumstances require, it may be conducted remotely as allowed for in the Constitution. The scheduled talk will be carried forward to another date.

Our monthly talk meetings on 17 April and 15 May:
These are both cancelled but we plan to revive them at a later date.

Leatherhead Museum at Hampton Cottage:
In conjunction with the Friends of the Museum and those closely engaged on Museum affairs, the followings actions have been agreed. The Museum will NOT re-open to the public as scheduled on Thursday, 2 April and there will be no formal unveiling on Saturday, 4 April.

These decisions will all be reviewed frequently.

Society involvement with local archaeology:
No decision has yet been taken on the resumption of last year’s digs at Rowhurst as this involves agreement with partner organisations.

Outreach events such as Resident Association days, Heritage week etc:
No decision has yet been taken on these as they are too far in the future.

We naturally hope that everyone connected with the Society and Leatherhead Museum will successfully avoid this virus.



Saturday, 22 February 2020

SURREY'S ONGOING EXPERIENCE OF SPIES AND ASSASSINS OVER THE PAST CENTURY


Harry Palmer in The Ipress File (or rather Michael Caine in an early role)


 Alexander Perepilichnyy

 

Jozef Gabčík


 Jan Kubis

Surrey folk are probably no more suspicious of espionage than anyone else but the past century has seen various times of heightened awareness here. As the actor Michael Caine is one of Leatherhead's best known current residents it made sense for LORRAINE SPINDLER to begin her February talk to a packed house at the Letherhead Institute on spies and assassins in our midst, with a picture of him starring as fictional spy Harry Palmer in the film of Len Deighton's book, The Ipcress File.

But, as she said, truth is stranger than fiction.

In November 2012 a Russian migrant named Alexander Perepilichnyy suddenly  collapsed and died while out jogging with his dog at St George’s Hill near his £3 million home in Weybridge. Aged just 44 he was previously healthy but had taken out a £3.5 million life insurance policy.

A heart attack was blamed but it emerged that he had been on a Kremlin hit list and had refused to return to Russia. At the time of his death he had been helping investment firm Hermitage Capital Management uncover a £150 million Russian money-laundering operation. Among various lawsuits in which he had been involved was one brought by a company of which former KGB agent Dmitry Kovtun was a director. Kovtun, who met the ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko only hours before he was poisoned in London, was later himself hospitalised with radiation poisoning in Moscow. Mr Perepilichnyy was clearly no friend of President Vladimir Putin but was he also working for MI5 and MI6?

All very mirky but Surrey residents are still little affected normally by the dubious activities of emigré Russians. That was not the case for much of the first half of the 20th century when Germany posed a more direct threat.

Before World War 1 there was genuine fear of a German invasion. Britain was defended by the Royal Navy but what if the Kaiser's people managed to break  through and take whatever they wanted from comfortable Surrey? Spy mania meant some Surrey residents were convinced the Germans would poison their water. The diplomat, flying buff, wireless pioneer and writer William Le Queux secured a phenomenal bestseller with his anti-German invasion fantasy The Invasion of 1910, published in 1906. Erskine Childers' The Riddle of the Sands was also hugely popular. The war itself of course blocked any actual invasion but still brought untold suffering and loss for Surrey families along with the rest of the country.  

Twenty years later members of the Hitler Youth cycled around England including Surrey and were taught beforehand how to spy on the terrain, taking river measurements and so on. News of the horrors inflicted on Jewish communities even before World War 2 showed what the Germans were capable of if given an opportunity.

In 1938 following Chamberlain's treaty with Hitler, the Czech government-in-exile settled in Putney and after war broke out organised the Czechoslovak National Liberation Committee, later moving to Buckinghamshire. Two young Czech soldiers in exile, Josef and Jan, came to Headley in November 1941 wanting to work for the Allies. Locals still recall widespread speaking of Czech in the village but few people knew there was a Special Operations Executive training centre there as well as a prisoner of war camp for German officers.

Villa Bellasis at Headley trained Czech paratroopers. 1st Lt Rudolf Hrubec organised a graduate course for sabotage groups. Josef Gabcik and Jan Kubis were there to improve their skills in motorised vehicles, Morse Code and orientation in unknown territory. They practised shooting with pistols and machine guns and throwing hand grenades. In December 1941 the RAF dropped the two paratroopers inside occupied Czechoslovakia where they contacted the local resistance. Lt Hrubec was later killed when his plane crashed in Italy. His whole family had been executed by the Nazis in 1942. Today Bellasis House survives as home to the Waite family which still has connections to the family of Winston Churchill.

In an interview with Lorraine, Edna Touzel of Banstead said everything had been  absolutely hush hush. She remembered walking in the countryside one day near Headley and meeting two unfamiliar middle aged women. They had asked if it had been quiet last night and had she had a good night's sleep. She had refused to answer as the women might have been spies. Her suspicions had proved well founded. German radio equipment was afterwards found dumped in a water storage system in Leatherhead.

The war diary of the Royal Canadian Engineers working on Headley Heath in November 1942 quotes the commanding officer: 'Everyone .. will make a definite rule NOT to mention any phase of their work to any person, or to discuss any place of their work with another member of staff when there is any possibility to being overheard.' So what was being kept secret and why was it so important?

Canadian involvement in the war was extensive and the country's forces were based in Surrey for much of the time. Two Canadian divisions organised and trained at the start came to be based here, 23,000 Canadians in all, most based at Aldershot. A New Zealand force joined them. In 1940 a new 7th Corps came into existence headquartered at Headley Court. Heated flight suits used by airmen on D-Day were also secretly produced in Banstead

Espionage in Surrey didn't end with World War 2. During the Cold War too there were clearly some things going on under the radar. Another interviewee told Lorraine about an event in the 1960s at Guildford Police Station.  

He said: 'There was some excitement when watchers from MI5 moved into the front downstairs office. They were there for many days waiting, playing cards, drinking my tea and no doubt eating the McVities. What they were up to I had no idea. One day I was in the front office when a caller came and asked for something using a box number of which I had become aware but which bemused the station officer. I took the visitor across the yard and he obviously thought I knew something of what was going on. "It will happen today and we will be gone," he said. Sometime later the phone rang, the office emptied and they never returned. Years later I read that an RAF warrant officer was spying for the Russians and he made a dead letter drop in Guildford at about that time.'


Friday, 17 January 2020

THE TALE OF TWO SCOTTISH TEENAGE PEN PALS AND DONALD TRUMP'S MUM


MARY ANN


AGNES


THE DAILY RECORD


REUNITED IN 1995

CATHY BRETT told a romantic story in her January lecture about two teenage girls who had no idea how exciting their lives were going to be. It was the story of her grandmother, Dr Agnes Bentley. When she died in 2001, Cathy inherited her large photographic archive and wartime diaries.
  
By 2015 Cathy had become a successful author and book illustrator. She took an MA in Illustration and Book Arts at UCA Farnham and one of her assignment themes was ‘memory’. Out came the archive and she created a series of illustrations using the photographs. Then in the summer of 2016 she found seven tiny snaps showing Agnes’s teenage pen pal friendship with  Mary Anne MacLeod from the Isle of Lewis - mother of  US presidential candidate Donald Trump! She posted the pictures on FaceBook.
  
Her friend and Scottish publisher Mairi Kidd replied immediately and asked if the photos could be forwarded to another friend, Torcuil Crichton, a journalist from the Isle of Lewis. He was working in London as political correspondent for several Scottish newspapers. Torcuil duly met Cathy and in August his article about the photographs was published in Scotland’s Daily Record.
  
The story was as follows. In the late summer of 1926, Agnes, age 14, returned to her Dundee home after a family holiday. Waiting for her was a letter from one Mary Ann MacLeod, also 14, who lived at Tong, near Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis. She had seen an article in the Dundee Courier about Agnes’s success in a painting competition. Mary Ann asked if they might become pen pals and enclosed a photograph. A regular correspondence followed and photographs exchanged. Mary Ann’s father was the village postmaster in Tong. The port of Stornoway was thee miles away and the rest of the island community consisted mostly of crofts and poor fishing villages.
  
In Dundee, Agnes, an only child, lived with her parents in a poor tenement. Her father had worked in the Blackness Foundry before World War 1 and now did odd jobs, collected rent and ran a small corner shop. But Agnes was very bright and secured a scholarship to Dundee High School. She wrote in her memoir about being bullied and feeling ashamed of her home-made uniform but she made friends and thrived, winning medals and coming top of her class.
  
Mary Ann continued to write, complaining of loneliness as many people were leaving Lewis to emigrate to Canada and New Zealand, including all of her nine siblings. She was the last and alone with her parents. In early 1930, Agnes got a letter from her saying she was leaving too. She had been invited to New York by her sister, who was going to help her to get a job. Mary Ann asked if Agnes would come to Glasgow to see her off on the ship. In the spring of 1930, the girls met for the first time there aged 17.
  
By then Agnes was at St Andrews University, studying French and German. They continued to write and exchange photos and gifts even after Agnes won a scholarship to continue her studies at a German university. In September 1933, she travelled to Marburg to begin her doctorate. At the end of her first year she travelled home to Scotland for the summer holiday. By chance Mary Ann was home in Lewis too but preparing to settle for good in New York.
  
The girls had a day together shopping in Glasgow. Mary Ann was looking for a gift for her new boyfriend, Fred, and they found some fashionable fur-backed gloves that Mary Ann thought would be ideal.  Agnes bought a pair for herself. They said their goodbyes and Mary Ann set sail on the Transylvania. She turned 18 on the voyage.
  
At the end of the summer, Agnes returned to Marburg and in 1934 met her future (first) husband, Werner Schurhoff, a fellow student. Before the end of the decade both girls were married, Mary Ann to Fred Trump, a property magnate, and Agnes to Werner. They continued to write, sharing landmark events like marriage and children until the outbreak of war. The letters then stopped and they lost touch. Agnes resettled in Britain with her children after the war.
  
Following the story’s appearance in the Daily Record, Cathy was approached by Mirror Group Newspapers which wanted to add the pictures to its photo stock. In 2016 the mother of presidential candidate Donald Trump was potentially an interesting story. Cathy was offered a licence for the photos but warned they might not raise much money. She pushed for a 70/30 split and thought nothing more until the November election shock. Suddenly everybody wanted the pictures and the money started to roll in.
  
Torcuil said the story should be pitched to BBC Scotland as an original drama. Nothing happened for a few months but then he suggested developing it as a documentary. At Westminster he asked Cathy if she would be willing to be interviewed for a programme. He had already approached Calum Angus Mackay, a producer/director friend from the Isle of Lewis who had agreed to make a ‘taster’ film. This was pitched to  BBC Alba, the Gaelic language channel, which approved it and provided funding together with TG4 in Ireland. Distribution deals were agreed in the US too.
  
Early last year location shooting began, including Trump’s fleeting visit to Scotland, with protest marches filmed in Edinburgh. Filming in Dundee astonished Cathy’s family who had never previously seen the tenement where Agnes grew up. On the Isle of Lewis people were interviewed who had known Mary Ann before she married Trump’s father. Then in early summer they filmed in New York and Washington.
  
Cathy was filmed at her desk in Surrey as she turned the story of Mary Ann and Agnes into a graphic novella. Images were included in the film. In September she drove up to the Western Isles to see where it had all begun. She met Calum Angus in Stornoway. He had finished editing and was about to deliver the film to the BBC. She saw it at the Art Centre An Lanntair where it was to be premiered the day after she left. She was filmed there for the local news. The premiere was a sell-out even before it aired on BBC Alba.
  
Cathy finished the book in October and had 100 copies printed for the Yorkshire Comics Festival, Thought Bubble, in November where it was a sensation. Copies are now available at GOSH Comics in London and online.
  
But that was not quite the end of the story. In 1995, 50 years after World War 2, Agnes chanced to see a late night TV programme. Selina Scott had filmed a profile of the  tycoon Donald Trump with  cameras in Trump Tower, New York, in his mother’s apartment.  She was referred to as the former Mary Ann MacLeod from Lewis Scotland. Agnes jumped. This elegant lady with blonde hair was sitting with her legs crossed, just as the original Mary Ann had done.
   
The next day Agnes wrote to her old friend at Trump Tower and got a swift reply. Later that summer, Mary Ann visited London on route to Scotland and invited Agnes to lunch at The Dorchester.
  
Mary died in 2000 and Agnes a year later so neither saw Trump become US President. What might the old friends from 1930s Scotland have thought of that, not to mention the TV documentary and book?