Starting at the top of the scale of destruction, a not insubstantial number of houses were either burnt down entirely, or at least partly gutted by fire.1
John Martin Robinson
All the houses featured so far, with the exception of Inverailort Castle in the Highlands, sustained little or no substantial damage during their period of occupancy in the war. However, not all homeowners were as fortunate as the Actons at Aldenham or the Mortons at Aston Abbotts. Many houses suffered lasting damage during the five or six years they were requisitioned and some had to be demolished, although this was not always through wanton destruction but rather neglect. The group of people who caused most damage to the English country houses in the Second World War were the military. Melford Hall, the subject of this chapter, was badly damaged by fire in 1942 as were other houses used by the armed forces.
In 1938 the Treasury asked the armed services and other major government bodies to stake their claim on properties in the event of war. Most were stabbing in the dark and a survey of estimates versus actual usage conducted in 1941 showed how difficult it had been to guess what would be needed. For example, the air force had put in a bid for 5,000 premises but in the event they occupied over 20,000. The army needed large establishments for training and housing troops and that need grew as the build-up towards D-Day saw a high point of over 1.5 million American servicemen and women. All these, plus 350,000 Canadians who passed through Britain over the course of the war, not to speak of the Czechs, Poles and others who fought alongside the Allies, needed to be accommodated.
They arrived in large numbers and took over houses, outbuildings, gardens and fields wholesale, setting up cookhouses, latrines, tent cities and hospital huts. It was not just British units that took over country houses. Many were occupied by successive waves of military organisations and by fighting men of different nationalities. The first wave of incoming servicemen came from Canada, Norway, Poland and Czechoslovakia. This was a major change for many areas where outsiders were viewed either with suspicion or as a novelty. Towns where foreigners were almost completely unknown before the war, villages where a visitor from a neighbouring county were considered strangers suddenly became multi-cultural. Unfamiliar languages were heard on the streets and accents that belonged in the cinema held conversations in local pubs. One girl in Ayrshire told historian Norman Longmate that by the end of the war she had met French Canadians who played ice hockey but ‘would fight at the drop of a hockey stick and threw the puck at the spectators’.2 She had also seen Indians, Dutchmen and black Americans. She was once warned not to get too close to the Poles as they were rumoured to sleep in hairnets. All these men had to be accommodated and it was inevitable that large houses in the countryside would be needed.
In his Problems of Social Policy, Richard Titmuss explained that ‘the Army . . . had a habit of requisitioning just the type of house fit for use as a hostel or nursery. In many areas it had taken over by the end of 1940 all large houses, village halls and empty buildings, even after some had been inspected and earmarked for the reception of evacuated mothers and children.’3 It was natural that rival groups would be fighting for accommodation in the safer parts of the country. The armed forces needed to be able to train in areas undisturbed by the enemy, but equally, companies manufacturing vital war goods wanted factories away from target areas and civilians needed some respite from the bombardment in the cities. Usually the army won the battle for houses.
During 1940, the War Office greatly expanded the number of houses it requisitioned in all parts of the country. By 1941 there were over 2 million British and colonial troops based in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The West Country was much favoured after the evacuation of Dunkirk and the fall of France. Far from the continent and sparsely inhabited, it also had ideal countryside for training. Furthermore, there were plenty of large properties that could be taken over. Usually only the officers and battalion HQ occupied the main house. The rest of the regiment was billeted in stables, outbuildings, cottages and tents, and later Nissen huts which provided more permanent accommodation.
Jeffrey Morrell was an eight-year-old boy living at home with his parents near Doncaster when the army arrived, shortly after Dunkirk. The local grand house, Brodsworth Hall, was taken over and tents planted in the grounds while the woods were used for bomb practice. One day, not long after the army had arrived, an officer came to the front door and said to his father: ‘We are taking your farm building and house over, Mr Morrell.’ Somewhat taken aback, Jeffrey’s father enquired when. ‘Now!’ came the reply. With that the army took over five bedrooms, the dining room and the back kitchen, where they installed a new range. The house became the officers’ mess feeding about twenty-five for lunch and supper. The batmen to the officers, about eight of them, lived in a back bedroom on bunk beds. Jeffrey’s mother was astonished to discover the cook had previously been the pastry chef at the Savoy Hotel in London.
For Jeffrey this was a thrilling time. Corporal Kay, who was in charge of the officers’ mess, used to take him shopping in an army vehicle. They shopped at the local market and the local wine merchants, but the village shops did not benefit from the army’s presence as the soldiers had a NAAFI and bought their cigarettes, chocolate and other bits and bobs there. Jeffrey said: ‘The village folk didn’t come into contact that much with the soldiers and we boys were forbidden from going into the woods to collect souvenirs from the bombs. Didn’t always stop us though!’4 When the 45th Division left for Africa, the 44th Division arrived and took over the set-up. Although Jeffrey found it exciting having the army in the village, his parents were not so amused. ‘The army knocked hell out of the furniture and Mum’s kitchen. My parents got very little in the way of compensation.’5
Sometimes whole villages were taken over, as was the case of Tyneham and Worbarrow in Dorset, which were evacuated in December 1943 and have remained deserted ever since. Poignantly, the villagers of Tyneham left a note on the church door as they evacuated. It read: ‘Please treat the church and houses with care; we have given up our homes where many of us lived for generations to help win the war to keep men free. We shall return one day and thank you for treating the village kindly.’6
However, they never did return. The villagers felt it was a very heavy price to pay for supporting the war effort, and there have been periodic attempts to fight for Tyneham but none has been successful and it remains a ghost village. Tyneham, Worbarrow and 7,500 acres of land and Jurassic coastline are now managed by the Ministry of Defence and access to the area is still limited as it is part of the Lulworth Ranges, used by the army for training. An unexpected consequence of the occupation is that wildlife has flourished in the area as no modern farming methods have been introduced.
That the army was guilty of vandalism and wanton destruction cannot be denied. John Martin Robinson wrote, ‘Some . . . treated the buildings better than others, but from the point of view of the owners, occupation of their houses by the armed forces, especially by the army, was the worst fate that could befall them.’7 There are stories of Van Dycks being used as dartboards and staircases chopped up for firewood, jeeps were driven into carved gates or into lakes where they were found years later. Some houses, such as Warnford Park in Hampshire, were so badly damaged that they had to be demolished. Lowther Castle in Cumbria had to be abandoned and today stands as a carefully restored ruin.
Author Caroline Seebohm was more generous in her summary of the impact of the army on country houses. She looked at the situation from the other side of the story:
If soldiers were the main culprits in causing damage to houses, it must be remembered that in many cases these were young, inexperienced men, far from home, waiting to be called to action from which they might never return. If they looked around them at all, they saw, not beautiful antique banisters or glorious eighteenth-century mouldings, but grim dormitories, the precincts of death.9
However, more often than not it was either neglect or frustration at the inadequate accommodation that was the cause of the greatest damage. For six years no routine maintenance was carried out on properties that were centuries old and in need of constant attention. Roofs remained unrepaired, window frames unpainted and rot untreated, leading to serious problems in Britain’s damp climate. These great houses, with their scores of bedrooms and vast entertaining rooms, were not heated. Most had been run by armies of servants who tended fires, carried hot water up and down stairs year in year out, and kept the places warm and cared for a tiny number of pampered inhabitants. It was not unusual for a family of four to be attended by upwards of thirty indoor maids, butlers, housekeepers, cooks and cleaners with a similar number working in the grounds and stables. Without the staff to keep the houses going there were few comforts, not nearly enough bathrooms and sometimes the houses were less attractive or comfortable for their new occupants than a Victorian barracks built for mass accommodation. Evelyn Waugh was unimpressed when he was billeted in Kingsdown House in Kent in January 1940.
The house was derelict and surrounded by little asbestos huts . . . one bath for sixty men, one wash basin, the WCs all frozen up and those inside the house without seats. Carpetless, noisy and cold. A ping-pong table makes one room uninhabitable, a radio the other. We are five in a bedroom without a coat peg between us.10
A fresh wave of requisitioning began when over a million more American GIs arrived to prepare for the invasion of Europe. Few of them had left America before and by the time they arrived in unfamiliar Britain they had suffered a debilitating troopship crossing of the Atlantic in their convoys, dodging submarines, often landing in Northern Ireland before being billeted who only knew where. They were put up in remote country villages where no restaurant had even heard of – let alone served – a hamburger. The lack of showers, central heating and lager led many to feel homesick initially, but some grew to love the pretty countryside and the quirky English ways. By and large they were welcome guests and had a good reputation among local communities for putting things right if they went wrong. A schoolboy in Dorset said that a neighbour had been delighted when his farm, damaged by American tanks on manoeuvres, was restored within a week. They repaired all the hedges and even helped out with the harvest, towing the old-fashioned binding machines with their jeeps. Another group damaged an ancient gateway leading to a fine manor house but restored it to its former glory in two days. The owners of Peover Hall in Cheshire were not so enthusiastic as the farmer in Devon. The US Third Army was based there and General Patton had his headquarters in the large Georgian wing in the build-up to D-Day. In 1944 a fire was started by a soldier and the house was so badly damaged that the wing was demolished after the war and the house returned to its pre-Georgian dimensions.
The arrival of Americans in such vast numbers had a major impact on life in certain areas of Britain. Not only were even more properties taken over but tented cities sprang up on the edge of villages or in the grounds of large country houses. The village of Fowey in Cornwall had the magnificently named USN AATSB, or the United States Naval Advanced Amphibious Training Sub Base, which trained at Pentewan Beach twelve miles to the west. The officers were billeted at Heligan House and 850 men lived in tents. It was said that in the build-up to D-Day it was possible to walk across the river from Fowey to Polruan on American boats and landing craft, a distance of over 400 metres at high tide. Soldiers charged around the tiny narrow lanes in convoys of jeeps, while the village halls shook to jitter-bugging and children crowded around for sweets and chewing gum, which the Americans seemed to have in unlimited quantities. The US military took great trouble to help their men fit into wartime Britain and gave them advice on what to expect from the reserved Englishman or woman. ‘If Britons sit in trains or buses without striking up conversation with you, it doesn’t mean they are being haughty or unfriendly.’11 The citizens of Fowey quickly became used to their new guests with their enthusiasm and energetic attitude towards life. Then one day they woke to find the harbour empty and the Americans gone. They, like all the other GIs spread across the south-west, had left the shores for the beaches of Normandy.
The US 333rd Field Artillery Battalion (FAB) arrived in Britain in February 1944 in preparation for the Ardennes offensive, or the Battle of the Bulge. The soldiers were a black battalion from Alabama, a small number of the 130,000 black soldiers billeted in Britain from 1942 onwards. For many inhabitants of the small Cheshire village of Tattenhall, where the US 333rd FAB were housed, it was the first time they had encountered a black man. Equally, the Cheshire countryside provided a novelty for the southern American soldiers: it was the first time they had ever seen snow. They were billeted in and around a house called the Rookery, hunkered under the commanding ruin of Beeston Castle which is situated on a magnificent rock towering over the Cheshire plain and leading the eye westward to north Wales.
Alabama in 1944 was still a segregated state, but that was unknown in Britain and the local community extended warm hospitality and friendship. The soldiers had to be reassured that it was permissible for them to walk on pavements or go into the same pubs, shops and restaurants as their British hosts. Unsurprisingly, this caused a problem and the US Army had to warn its white soldiers that it was acceptable in Britain for people to socialise together regardless of the colour of their skin. Longmate wrote: ‘Relations between the coloured GIs and British civilians were always excellent, but some serious disorders occurred between white and coloured Americans.’12 There were one or two well-publicised incidents where fights ended with fatalities. In Kingsclere near Newbury in Hampshire a group of black soldiers took exception to being shut out of a pub and attacked the premises with rifle fire. Several people died including the wife of the publican. Tragic though these few incidents were, they were not the experience of the majority. When the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion left Tattenhall in summer sunshine six months after they had arrived in snow, one of the soldiers, Private George Davis, wrote, ‘We have found Paradise’. Wretchedly, many of them were killed or captured near Antwerp. Davis was one of eleven soldiers who became separated from the rest and was hidden by a sympathetic Dutch farmer, only to be betrayed by a Nazi sympathiser and brutally murdered by the Germans at Wereth.
Wollaton Hall in Nottinghamshire played host to the 508th Parachute Regiment from Camp Blanding in Florida. They arrived in Belfast in early January 1944 and spent a bitterly cold month at Portstewart before transferring to Wollaton Hall to take over one of the more unusual of Britain’s requisitioned properties. The men were housed in tents in the grounds below the house and were catered for by field kitchens, but the officers used the hall itself as a mess. Wollaton Hall is a spectacular Elizabethan mansion that stands at the top of a low hill, dominating the park and countryside around it. It had belonged to the Willoughby family between 1580 and 1925, when the eleventh Baron Middleton, Michael Willoughby, sold it to Nottingham Council who converted it into a natural history museum. When the officers of the 508th arrived at their new home they found a large collection of stuffed animals and birds, including an ostrich, a giraffe, a puma, a silver-back gorilla, kangaroos, turtles, a magnificent albatross and a shark as well as thousands of insects, geology and botany specimens.
One of the officers in the regiment was Captain William ‘Bill’ Nation, from Texas. He made three short films on an eight-millimetre cine camera of the regiment’s stay at Wollaton Hall which he sent back, unprocessed, to his parents before he left the hall in December 1944. The film was silent and initially there was no indication as to the location of the 508th regiment, but Nation’s parents worked out where their son had been by piecing together clues, such as one of the men posing as Robin Hood next to a tree. A commentary was added after the war and is an enchanting insight into the lives of the young American parachutists prior to their introduction into occupied Europe: ‘We loved it there, the people, the quaint pubs and inns, the girls. Friendly pubs and families took us in and made us feel part of home life.’13
The narrative goes on: ‘I enjoyed visiting Nottingham Palladium where they had big band music and dancing and many, many girls who wanted to dance with the soldiers. We busted our butts during the daylight hours getting the camp ready but once the sun set we busted those same butts in town . . .’14
It is hard to remember the training in the lovely Nottinghamshire countryside was setting them up for the terrifying prospect of jumping out of an aeroplane in the dark into enemy territory, with trees and swamps and other unseen hazards between the sky and the ground, before they met a single German. By June the 508th were ready to be included in the D-Day attacks. They left Folkingham on the night of 5 June and fought bravely over the next thirty-three days, sustaining over 300 casualties. In September, the 508th took part in Operation Market Garden at Arnhem with a further 681 casualties. By November they had regrouped in France and on 31 January 1945 Bill Nation was killed when his command post was hit by shells. He never saw the film footage he shot the previous summer and his parents would only piece together the last months of their son’s life much later. He was one of the half of his regiment who would not return to the United States. Wollaton Hall was vacated by September 1944 and the stuffed animals, birds and fish remained undisturbed for the rest of the war.
In the south and the east, the coastal counties of Britain were under threat of attack for most of the war. Melford Hall, Holy Trinity Church and Kentwell Hall form a striking triangle of buildings in the Suffolk village of Long Melford. So striking, according to recent research, that Luftwaffe pilots and navigators were ordered not to bomb them. They used them as a landmark with which to orientate themselves as they flew over the coast at Felixstowe, some thirty miles east as the crow flies. The prosperous market town of Long Melford was on the second line of defence during the Second World War. The first line of defence ran from Colchester to Beccles and was designed as forward boundaries for reserves moving up to confront an invader. If the first line fell, the second line would become critical as a defensive line.
Colchester, a garrison town just eighteen miles south and home of the 4th Infantry Division, was swollen by 1st Battalion East Surrey Regiment, 1st Battalion Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry as well as other field and anti-tank regiments. The port of Ipswich is twenty-three miles to the east of the town. The Germans targeted Ipswich docks and the surrounding areas where a large munitions factory was placed. It was clear that Long Melford would be involved in one way or another; the question was not if but who would occupy the main buildings and when. Kentwell Hall was requisitioned as a major army transit camp throughout the war and as an assembly point for troops preparing for the D-Day landings in 1944.
A succession of regiments used Melford Hall and its extensive grounds for training; each regiment staying some four to six months and then moving on. In 1937, Arthur Oswald, writing in Country Life, described Melford Hall externally as ‘one of the most perfect Tudor houses that have come down to us. Its beautifully balanced design and picturesquely varied outline alike reflected the ideals of the age in which it was built. Order and symmetry on one hand, lavishness and variety on the other were equally delightful to the Elizabethans.’15 James Lees-Milne was also enchanted by the house when he visited, writing: ‘The motorist arriving from the south has a most tantalising glimpse over the wall of towers, cupolas, twisted chimneys and tufted trees. A turreted gatehouse in the style of, but much later than the house is a prelude of what is to come. It is the entrance to the short drive, which leads to a circular gravel sweep before the Hall.’16
Melford Hall was nearly five hundred years old and parts of it were even older, dating back to the eleventh century, when it had been used by the abbots of Bury St Edmunds. The Hyde Parker family had owned the hall since 1786. Sir William Hyde Parker, who had fought in the South African War and the First World War, offered Melford Hall to the War Office at the beginning of the war and it was accepted, though it would have been requisitioned had he not offered it. It was used initially as a training camp and then as a starting off point for soldiers heading into occupied Europe, including American troops in the build-up to D-Day. In 1939, the Hyde Parker family consisted of Sir William and Lady Ulla, an artist of Danish descent, who had met her English baronet when she accompanied her father, the Old Testament scholar Christian Ditlef-Nielsen, to London. She had been studying art in Copenhagen but gave it up to marry in 1931. Their first child, a son, Richard, was born in 1937; two years later, Lady Ulla was expecting their second child. She wrote in a memoir: ‘On 3 September 1939 war was declared, and that same day our little daughter Beth was born. While I was still in bed after her birth, the army took over the house as the second defence line ran through the park. 105 officers and 100 men moved into Melford Hall, and subsequently hundreds more men were billeted in Nissen huts in the park and grounds.’17
Sir William was waiting to join his old regiment, though at forty-seven years of age he knew he would not see active service abroad. Meanwhile he joined the Home Guard, but was badly injured in the blackout when his car was involved in a crash with an army lorry. His injuries were so severe that he had to be sent to London where ‘Sir Harold Giles performed the operation and subsequent plastic surgery to save his face from being completely disfigured for life.’18 Sir Harold told Lady Hyde Parker that Sir William would need complete rest and total quiet for several months in order to recover his strength. Long Melford was bristling with soldiers in training and was far from quiet so was clearly unsuitable for a convalescent. Eventually Lady Ulla had the idea to ring Sir William’s cousin Beatie, who she had met on several visits to the Lake District. This was Beatrix Potter, now in her seventies. She had spent a great deal of time at Melford Hall at the end of the nineteenth century sketching architectural details, the garden and the servants’ quarters for her children’s books. Jeremy Fisher’s pond is the ancient fish pond at Melford Hall; the fireplace in The Tailor of Gloucester is a perfect copy of the one in the servants’ kitchen, and both Jemima Puddle-Duck and the Foxy Whiskered Gentleman were sketched in the family visitors’ book.
When Ulla rang, Beatie’s immediate response was warm and generous: ‘Come here; bring him and the little ones. I will find somewhere for you to stay.’ 19 So off they went. Lady Ulla and the nanny, a local girl called Sibyl May Kitchen, packed up the pram, cots, baby bath and baggage onto a trailer behind a large hired car. ‘Willie and I sat on the back seat with little Beth in a carry cot at our feet. Richard sat on Nanny’s knee in front, and Mr Young, the owner of the car and the garage in Melford, drove us.’20
Sir William was weak and very ill so it took the party two days to reach Castle Cottage. Beatrix Potter gasped when she saw the state of her cousin, greeting him and Lady Ulla with ‘Oh my dears!’ She had arranged for them to say at the local inn but the landlady was also horrified by Willie’s condition and told them that she could not take responsibility for such a sick man. Beatrix offered them Hill Top. This was her own home and the place where she went to be quiet when she needed peace. When she had married, she’d shut the door and turned the key in the lock. She and William Heelis would never live there. Beatrix said to Ulla: ‘You know and understand what Hill Top means to me, therefore I shall let you all live there. No one has slept there since I left.’21 That had been twenty-six years earlier, in 1913.
Soon we were installed at Hill Top Farm. I do hope Cousin Beatie realised how grateful I was. Willie improved greatly there. He and Cousin Willie [Heelis] spent much time together, mostly fishing when Cousin Willie was free to do so. The children, the house and the cooking kept Nanny and me very busy, especially as the house did not have the same conveniences as Melford. Coal was kept in the old pigsty, and we collected kindling and wood in the little spinney nearby. We used an oil stove for cooking. The peace and simplicity of lovely Hill Top farm did us all a great deal of good. The horrors of war and of the Gestapo in occupied countries, like my native Denmark, seemed further off. 22
The family spent a year living in the Lake District. Sir William’s health improved and everyone benefitted from the outdoor life in that beautiful corner of Cumbria. In 1941, they returned to a house called the Grange on the village green in Long Melford and observed with some alarm the transformations that had taken place in the village and, most of all, at the hall. Regiments spent up to six months at the hall and each introduced their own changes. The herbaceous borders had been removed and the land around the hall was littered with Nissen huts for up to 1,000 men. The cookhouse was close to the entrance gates and the army had constructed a sewerage pit in the gardens. The hall already had gas in each room but the army introduced wiring for electricity and brought huge water tanks into the attics.
A recent find under floorboards in Melford Hall revealed some delightful everyday details about life there during the war. Private R. H. Bell of the Berkshire Regiment used the Clacton Steam Laundry Ltd to service one shirt, two vests, one pair of pants, one pair of socks and a towel per week. The finds also show that Mars bars have barely changed their logo in almost a century and that soldiers had been entitled to Cadbury’s Ration Chocolate, presumably supplied through the NAAFI. Other items found include darts, leave passes and a battered copy of Norman Lindsay’s uproariously funny novel The Cautious Amorist from 1932.
Richard and Beth Hyde Parker were now old enough to understand some of what was going on in the village around them. They lived opposite the entrance to the hall and would lean out of the windows to watch the comings and goings. Beth remembered riding on the back of her mother’s Great Dane who ambled up to the guard on the gate who took hold of the dog’s collar, turned it around and patting it on the bottom sent it back across the green to where it had come from. Richard described the war as ‘fun and hell all mixed up’. Another boy of a similar age described his memories of Long Melford during the war years. ‘It saw change overnight, it was no longer safe for young children to cross the road alone. There were military vehicles, dispatch riders and tanks along with the familiar sight of horses pulling farm carts. There were also squads of soldiers being drilled up and down the road, but even they had to give way occasionally to animals being driven to market in Sudbury or to a change of pasture.’23 There were men charging around on foot, carrying out manoeuvres; there were army vehicles of all shapes and sizes coming in and out of the entrance to the hall and Richard recalled how astonished he was by the size of the American lorries that thundered down the long high street in the build-up to D-Day. Beth agreed with the memory: ‘I leant out of the nursery window as the Yanks arrived. They were the biggest trucks I had ever seen, driven by black men with hats askew. They sometimes kicked one foot out of the cab door and they chewed on cigars rather than smoking them.’24 Above them, the skies were full of B24 and B17 aircraft that flew from two large bomber stations, RAF Lavenham and RAF Sudbury nearby. This peaceful corner of the country had come alive with round-the-clock activity and preparations.
One of Richard’s strongest recollections was of the Grange’s cellar during the air raids in 1944. ‘If the sirens went off we went into the cellar, which smelled of white wash and egg preserving liquid.’ Being physically close to his parents, nanny and the evacuees made a great impression on him. He loved the smell of the blankets and the warmth of human bodies so close together. V2 rockets came from Norway and landed in the pond, in a hay stack and further away in the woods. The hall was never hit, either by a V2 or by German bombers earlier in the war, but the surrounding area came under attack because of the airfields close by. Once, three schoolboys found an unexploded bomb after an air raid. It had fallen in Stanstead Great Wood a couple of miles to the north of the village. The woods were cordoned off but the boys could not resist the temptation. Arthur Kemp, then ten years old, described seeing a bomb flight sticking out of the ground. It was about three inches long and the whole bomb was eight inches in diameter. It had German writing on it and a button. They picked up the bomb and gingerly carried it back through the village to the primary school, taking turns to carry it in twos as it was very heavy. They laid it carefully out on the grass about three metres from the school buildings and rang the doorbell of the headmaster’s house. His wife opened the door, saw the bomb and fainted. Her husband took charge, sending the boys through to the school yard where they were told to stand with their hands against the wall until the bomb had been made safe. They were given a severe ticking off by the army disposal squad, who took the bomb away and blew it up in the park beyond Melford Hall. The following day they were caned for their dangerous actions but it did not stop Arthur Kemp looking out for other war booty over the next few years of the war.
The army’s occupation of Melford Hall resulted in several disasters for the house, the most catastrophic of which happened in February 1942 when the Berkshire Regiment held a fundraising ball at Melford Hall for war savings week. Sir William and Lady Hyde Parker were invited. Lady Hyde Parker was somewhat shocked to see a bar set up in the library but the ball was a success and raised enough money to buy two Bren gun carriers. Late in the evening a small group of junior officers broke into the north wing, which was strictly out of bounds as it housed the family’s stored treasures, including a bed that had been slept in by Queen Elizabeth in 1578 when she was on a visit to Suffolk. In one of the bedrooms they set up a roulette table, something the local girls who were invited to the ball had never seen before. They played roulette and cards and drank heavily. It was a bitterly cold night so one of the soldiers set a fire in the hearth to warm the room. In the early hours they crept back into the main hall and thence to their village billets.
The following morning was cold and frosty. A gardener, up at an early hour spotted smoke billowing out of the chimney in the north wing, then saw flames leaping from the roof. He immediately called Sir William who rushed out of the Grange in his pyjamas and gave orders to summon the fire brigade. They received the call at 8.03am according to the Lavenham Press from the report written up in Firefighting in Suffolk, but struggled with their thirteen pumps and hoses which had frozen. The pond was frozen too and Sir William had trouble breaking the ice.
The East Anglian Daily Times reported the fire a week later:
Long Melford, Hadleigh, Ipswich, Clare and Sudbury Brigades were all engaged with a dozen pumps working at full pressure and a network of hoses running through the grounds from the river whose water was incessantly poured upon the flames from many jets. The roof of the north wing soon collapsed while parts of the walls also came crashing down, leaving the interior a raging inferno. The flames were making headway through the middle section which connects the south wing, and, for a time, it seems as if the whole of the mansion would be involved . . .25
Over the course of the day the fire brigade worked tirelessly to contain the fire, fighting it and eventually cutting it off in the roof of the Long Gallery in the west wing. When it was finally extinguished the damage could be assessed. The north wing was completely gutted and stood as an empty, smouldering shell. The west wing had lost its roof to the flames, though later it was the damage caused by the water that was the biggest blight. The wing was beset with dry rot.
Mercifully none of the fire-fighters lost their lives but one man suffered a broken leg. Meanwhile, Lady Ulla was busy at the scene, trying to persuade the officers housed in the hall to help clear out the precious works of art and other treasures stored in the north wing. The colonel refused to oblige so she ran to the Nissen huts and urged the men to help, which they did willingly, forming a human chain to rescue as much as they could from the wing. Lady Ulla was at the head of the chain, selecting the most vital and important works. All this time the fire was raging in the roof above and the north wing was becoming ever more dangerous. One of the men in the chain realised they had moved everything they safely could and pulled Lady Ulla out of the burning building just as a huge chandelier came crashing down behind her. His actions almost certainly saved her life. Left behind in the blaze was a large painting by George Stubbs, a Titian and the Elizabethan four-poster bed.
Photographs from the immediate aftermath of the fire show the smouldering ruins of the north wing and the almost completely destroyed roof of the west wing. The frozen ground in front of the hall was littered with tables, chairs, pictures, ornaments. There was great sympathy locally for Sir William and Lady Hyde Parker, who had lost so many of their treasures. A contemporary, anonymous account said: ‘It was a strange sight to see furniture, paintings, silver, armaments and carpets and curtains laying on the lawns while the descending snow quickly covered them all with its white blanket and long icicles hung from the black charred walls of the burnt-out wing.’
While no one ever admitted responsibility for the blaze, the cause was never in doubt. The officers who had sneaked into the north wing had lit a fire on the hearth in the absence of a grate and this had burned into a beam which smouldered all night and eventually caught fire. No one understood why the colonel had refused to help Lady Ulla to rescue her possessions from the north wing until it transpired, in a court martial, that there was an illegal stash of ammunition in the cellar of the wing. One can only imagine what might have happened if that stash had ignited.
After the fire was extinguished Sir William was nowhere to be seen. A search party was sent out, anxious that he might have been overwhelmed by the disaster that had befallen his home, but he was found on horseback in the woods marking oak trees. He was determined from the moment he saw the damage that he would rebuild the hall and that he would devote all his resources and energy to the restoration, as well as a great quantity of seasoned oak.
The last regiment to use Melford Hall as a training base was the Royal Hampshire in 1944. They remained there for almost six months in the build-up to D-Day and were visited by the King in late June. The local newspaper reported that George VI went to Long Melford to inspect spearhead troops assembled for the Normandy invasion. A local girl called Mary Young remembered the visit clearly as her father, Harold Young, was a special constable involved in organising security for the King. He arranged for Mary to stand on the bridge parapet in order to get a good view of him as he passed by in his car: ‘He looked very small with a yellow face. I think he was accompanied by General Alexander. I could see my father in the distance, forming a cordon across the road with other special constables, to allow the King to pass through the Hall gates.’26
Sir William Hyde Parker would never again live in his family home, Melford Hall. He died before the restoration on the great building had been completed. Like other properties that were sadly abused through occupation by the armed forces, it was remarkable that the short but ferocious period of war activity could undo centuries of architectural heritage through carelessness and neglect.