Whaddon Hall is a country house in Whaddon, Buckinghamshire. It is a Grade II listed building.[1]
History
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The first manor house was built on the site in the 11th century. The present house was built in 1820, replacing a house which was demolished in the late 18th century.[2][3] It was once home to the Selby family (also known as Selby-Lowndes), whose ancestor William Lowndes built the larger and grander Winslow Hall.[4]
During the Second World War Whaddon Hall served as headquarters of Section VIII (Communications) of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, or MI6), under the command of Brigadier Richard Gambier-Parry. The "Station X" wireless interception function was transferred here from Bletchley Park in February 1940.[5] That facility, known as Main Line, served in a number of capacities, the most critical the sending of Ultra intelligence from Bletchley Park to officers in the field.[6] The term Ultra was used to convey the status of the intelligence which was considered to be above Top Secret. It consisted of information that was gathered by breaking encrypted radio communications.[7]
At the time that France fell to the Axis Powers in June 1940, only a small number of SIS agents were in communication with Whaddon Hall. Early in the war, until about 1941, inexperienced SIS agents on the European continent spent too much time on the air, and jeopardised their security. However, by 1943, Gambier-Parry and his staff had engineered a substantial improvement in clandestine wireless communication.[8] The covert wireless network that Gambier-Parry established allowed him to stay in communication with SIS agents in many countries.[9]
The hall was converted for industrial use in the early 1960s and into a country club in the 1970s.[10] Following a serious fire in 1976,[1] it was refurbished and in the 1980s converted into flats;[10] as of 2017[update] it is divided into four units.[3]
References
edit- ^ a b "Whaddon Hall, Whaddon". British listed buildings. Retrieved 6 January 2018.
- ^ "Whaddon Hall, Milton Keynes, England". Retrieved 6 January 2018.
- ^ a b "A manor house under £1m that's close to London, near a great school and boasts a fabulous history". Country Life. 15 July 2017. Retrieved 2 April 2020.
- ^ "Winslow Hall and the Lowndes family". Winslow history. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
- ^ Pidgeon, Geoffrey (2003). Station X — The Secret Wireless War. Universal Publishing Solutions Online Ltd. ISBN 978-1-84375-252-3.
- ^ Corera, Gordon; Lace-Evans, Olivia (2 April 2020). "MI6: World War Two workers in rare 'forbidden' footage" (video, 2 mins, 40 secs.). BBC News.
- ^ "From the Wireless War to Warwick". 2.warwick.ac.uk. University of Warwick. Retrieved 9 November 2012.
- ^ Blishen, A. O. "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Parry, Sir Richard Gambier- (1894–1965), army officer and intelligence signals officer". oxford.dnb.com. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 23 November 2012.
- ^ Asa Briggs (14 May 2012). "Book Reviews — MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service". History Today. Retrieved 22 April 2013.
- ^ a b "Whaddon". Buckinghamshire Family History Site. Retrieved 6 January 2018.
