Beaumanor Hall
Encyclopedia
Stately home
A stately home is a "great country house". It is thus a palatial great house or in some cases an updated castle, located in the British Isles, mostly built between the mid-16th century and the early part of the 20th century, as well as converted abbeys and other church property...
with a park in the small village of Woodhouse
Woodhouse, Leicestershire
Woodhouse, often known to locals as Old Woodhouse, is a small village in the heart of Charnwood, England. Located between the larger Woodhouse Eaves and Quorn villages, this picturesque village, with a mixture of small cottages and large modern houses, is one of the most expensive villages in the...
on the edge of the Charnwood Forest
Charnwood Forest
Charnwood Forest is an upland tract in north-western Leicestershire, England, bounded by Leicester, Loughborough, and Coalville. The area is undulating, rocky and picturesque, with barren areas. It also has some extensive tracts of woodland; its elevation is generally 600 ft and upwards, the area...
, near the town of Loughborough
Loughborough
Loughborough is a town within the Charnwood borough of Leicestershire, England. It is the seat of Charnwood Borough Council and is home to Loughborough University...
in Leicestershire
Leicestershire
Leicestershire is a landlocked county in the English Midlands. It takes its name from the heavily populated City of Leicester, traditionally its administrative centre, although the City of Leicester unitary authority is today administered separately from the rest of Leicestershire...
in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. It was built in 1845-7 by architect William Railton
William Railton
William Railton was an English architect, best known as the designer of Nelson's Column. He was based in London with offices at 12 Regent Street for much of his career.He was a pupil of the London architect and surveyor William Inwood....
in Elizabethan style for the Herrick family. and is a Grade II* listed building It was used during the Second World War for military intelligence. It is now owned by Leicestershire County Council as a training centre, conference centre and residential facility for young people.
Beaumanor Park history
Until just preceding the Second World War in 1939, the Herrick family owned the park. The estate consisted of Beaumanor Hall, several farms, St Mary's in the Elms church, the vicarage house (Garats Hay), workers houses/cottages along Forest Road and 350 acres (1.4 km²) of beautiful parkPark
A park is a protected area, in its natural or semi-natural state, or planted, and set aside for human recreation and enjoyment, or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. It may consist of rocks, soil, water, flora and fauna and grass areas. Many parks are legally protected by...
land.
In 1939 the War Office
War Office
The War Office was a department of the British Government, responsible for the administration of the British Army between the 17th century and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the Ministry of Defence...
requisitioned the estate, including Garats Hay, and the vicar moved to a cottage in the village.
The park became a secret listening station where encrypted enemy signals (Morse code
Morse code
Morse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment...
) were intercepted and sent to the famous Station X at Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...
(by motorbike everyday) for decoding. Beaumanor Park was to be the home of the War Office ‘Y’ Group for the duration of the war.
After the war (1945) the Beaumanor estate passed back to Lt. Col. Assheton Penn Curzon Howe Herrick, who in 1946, for financial reasons (death duties, etc.), decided to dispose of his assets. In a sale conducted at the Town Hall in Loughborough
Loughborough
Loughborough is a town within the Charnwood borough of Leicestershire, England. It is the seat of Charnwood Borough Council and is home to Loughborough University...
on December 20–21, 1946, the War Office bought both Beaumanor Hall and Garats Hay and some of the immediate surrounding grounds used during the war.
Beaumanor Hall history 1939–1970
From 1939 the hall itself was occupied by Number 6 Intelligence school, and the rooms inside Beaumanor Hall were used as a training centre for the Civilian Staff of the Post OfficePost office
A post office is a facility forming part of a postal system for the posting, receipt, sorting, handling, transmission or delivery of mail.Post offices offer mail-related services such as post office boxes, postage and packaging supplies...
, Civil Service and Merchant Navy. The Royal Corps of Signals
Royal Corps of Signals
The Royal Corps of Signals is one of the combat support arms of the British Army...
, Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
and Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
were also having military staff trained inside the hall.
The huge cellars stretching underneath the whole of the building were used as electricians' workshops. The outbuildings and stables at the side and rear of the hall were used as workshops. These housed aerial riggers, a barracks store, M T Office, transport garage workshop and the instrument mechanics' laboratory.
By late 1941, most of the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
and Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
military personnel had left for duties at other Y-stations
Y-stations
Y-stations were British Signals Intelligence collection sites initially established during World War I and later used during World War II. These sites were operated by a range of agencies including the Army, Navy and RAF plus the Foreign Office , General Post Office and Marconi Company receiving...
, and the main part of the site became the home of the Royal Signals. Military personnel were still being trained inside the hall for various tasks until the end of the war. In February 1942 the first of the newly trained ladies of the Auxiliary Territorial Service
Auxiliary Territorial Service
The Auxiliary Territorial Service was the women's branch of the British Army during the Second World War...
arrived at Beaumanor and were billeted in outlying villages and Garats Hay hall. Beaumanor became one of the most important of the small number of strategic intercept stations, or "Y stations", intercepting enemy radio transmissions and relaying the information to "Station X", at Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...
, for decryption and analysis. It is known that one of the first confirmations of the successful Operation Chastise
Operation Chastise
Operation Chastise was an attack on German dams carried out on 16–17 May 1943 by Royal Air Force No. 617 Squadron, subsequently known as the "Dambusters", using a specially developed "bouncing bomb" invented and developed by Barnes Wallis...
mission was received here. It is also widely rumoured that this listening post knew details of the Katyn massacre
Katyn massacre
The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre , was a mass execution of Polish nationals carried out by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs , the Soviet secret police, in April and May 1940. The massacre was prompted by Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to execute all members of...
as early as 1941; however, the British government files were not released to the public, as it would implicate surviving perpetrators.
By 1943, Room 61 on the top floor of the hall was being used for Radio Finger Printing (Ackbar 13). This new technology was employed to uniquely identify the particular wireless set that was being used to send the transmissions.
Special receiving sets filmed the signals as they came in, like a cathode ray tube, and then the signals were captured on film and developed. Light tables were then used to compare the signals in order to verify who was sending them. A civilian from military intelligence at Bletchley Park was in charge of this room.
The Radio Direction Finding records room was next door and kept records of the signals' exact locations of origin.
In 1940 the use of the hall for all of these different functions allowed for the required specially designed wireless set rooms to be constructed in the grounds of the hall. This was instead of converting the existing rooms within the building for this purpose. A field to the north of the hall was chosen as the ideal location to construct the new set huts.
In the mid-1970s the hall was bought by the Leicestershire County Council, developing quickly into a busy Conference and Education Centre.
The operational huts
The War Office Y Group had acquired an architect who worked as part of the local staff at Beaumanor, and he was tasked with designing the set rooms and other buildings. These were to be disguised and fitted into their surroundings by being made to look like normal outbuildings associated with a country house. This disguising is unique to Beaumanor, and there are no current records of any other buildings the military used during the war being disguised in this way.A 20-acre
Acre
The acre is a unit of area in a number of different systems, including the imperial and U.S. customary systems. The most commonly used acres today are the international acre and, in the United States, the survey acre. The most common use of the acre is to measure tracts of land.The acre is related...
(81,000 m²) field to the north of the hall was chosen as the appropriate site to build the required operational set rooms (huts). The huts were spaced far enough apart to avoid collateral damage should a bombing raid occur. Each hut was brick-built with blast walls, and then a disguising outer covering was put over it.
The huts were disguised in different ways: one to look like a cart shed with barn (J), two to look like cottages (H&I), the fourth to look like stables (K), the fifth disguised as a glasshouse (M) block, and the sixth, Hut G, as a cricket pavilion complete with a false clock tower.
To give them an identity, the huts were each given a letter of the alphabet. The four huts around the perimeter of the field were lettered H, I, J and K. These huts were to be the four set rooms, which housed the wireless receivers for intercepting messages.
All of the cables and aerial feeds were located in underground ducts. Each hut had a pneumatic tube for sending the handwritten, received messages to G hut via a cylinder, which was shot down the tube. This tube system was also underground and out of sight.
In order to carefully conceal them, the other huts were given wooden exteriors and located in the wooded area to the rear of the hall on its western side. These huts were lettered A, B, C, D, E and F.