Barnes Lodge and the  Polish Connection

The area has associations of great antiquity for there is evidence of Neolithic activity in the vicinity. The Dury and Andrews map of 1766 shows a road or track leading to buildings and a map by A Bryant (1820/1821) simply shows a track. The Tithe Apportionment Survey of 1835 gives the occupier of Barnes Lodge as Jane Lafont, who owned the 15 acres including the house and garden, two meadows, a spinney and a paddock. The successive residents of this impressive property were necessarily of considerable means and who, from time to time, no doubt, entertained prestigious guests. In 1892 Lucy Broadwood, a major figure in folk song revival, visited Barnes Lodge. On this occasion, however, the owner was not her main interest for Lucy Broadwood had come to ask Clara Wilson, the wife of the gardener, to sing to her. In the 1913 Valuation Survey the house and grounds were valued at £7,548 comparable to Toovey’s Mill and Mill House but about one third of the value of Shendish or Abbotts Hill. Barnes Lodge, overlooking the Gade Valley, was an imposing building once described as a ‘diminutive mansion’.

A government Identity Card Register of 1939 named Emily G Lency, a widow aged 53 years, as the owner of Barnes Lodge and listed among others was a butcher, Frederick A Roberts aged 30. Some time after this Mrs Lency provided a testimonial (dated 6th June, no year) commending her servant of 14 years, Fred Roberts, of whom she wrote, 'I cannot speak too highly. He is leaving me as I have to let my house furnished for the duration of the war.' Barnes Lodge seems then first to have been a home for evacuees, as hostel accommodation for the Women's Land Army, Land Girls, and later in the war (World War 2) as a top secret radio station.

In 1949 the General Electric Company (GEC) was looking for new premises for their research department and enlisted the help of local estate agents who reported that Barnes Lodge had 4 reception rooms, 10 bedrooms and 31 acres of land valued at £10,500, but it was not c hosen by GEC. Following use of the building during the 1939 – 1945 war, from 1951 to 1968 it became a Preparatory School with Mr Martin Hayward as the Headmaster and finally used as a warehouse owned by Mr Chiltern Hunt.

‘Unless you are Polish, or are well versed in the events of the Second World War, the title would mean little, but a much better clue to the book’s content can be found in its subtitle ‘The Battle for Warsaw’. It is indeed the story of the insurrection, which took place in Warsaw, the capital of Poland, towards the end of the war. It was at that time that many Polish patriots, having been engaged in the underground resistance movement for five years, came out into the open in an attempt to drive out the hated Nazi occupiers of their country.

Barnes Lodge had no immediate neighbours, though it was less than a mile from the main railway line, and only 30 minutes journey time to London. It was surrounded by pine trees or thickets of hawthorn, alder and hazel and the winding drive up the hill gave no clue to its final destination. As the book indicates, “the iron gates, which stood back from the main road at the bottom, were wreathed in shrubbery, giving no hint of the guardhouse and the steel-net fence lurking beyond. A discreet notice read ‘Private’. Motorists driving past the village of Kings Langley on the A41 were unlikely to give a second thought as they negotiated the bend and the railway arch just after the drive.

The opening chapter of the story goes on to mention several notable features of the local landscape at the time - the mock-Tudor barns of the model Ovaltine Egg Farm, the platform at Kings Langley halt, the 46 radio towers at Chipperfield, and villagers drinking in the ‘isolated’ Eagle pub 200 yards from the gates to the Lodge, or at Ye Olde Red Lion beside the railway arch - before going on to describe in great detail the 63 days of the uprising.

Of particular interest to historians is the political intrigue behind the whole event and the relationship between the “Big Three” powers, Britain, the USA, and Russia. All three were fighting, apparently in unison, against the spread of the third Reich, but there was also an underlying fear that Stalin had other fish to fry than merely stopping the threat of Nazi influence. Stalin was in fact the villain in the story for, having pushed the Germans back to the outskirts of Warsaw, giving the underground fighters the belief that liberation was at hand, he then condemned the “Rising” as a ‘criminal adventure’ and refused to co-operate. His troops watched from across the river while the freedom fighters fought a fruitless campaign against the strength of the SS and the Wehrmacht. Poland’s Western allies expressed regret at this turn of events but did little to change the situation for fear of upsetting the Soviet leader.

So the sacrifice of the brave Polish resistance was in vain and Hitler’s orders to have the city, and its inhabitants, destroyed were carried out to the full. The whole story is told in great detail, using the memoirs of many survivors to complement the main narrative, and with a true historian’s attention to accuracy and understanding of the issues involved. Altogether a most interesting and thought provoking read, with the added spice of a little local flavour from the events taking place up at Barnes Lodge.’

We can now add recollections from men who actually worked at Barnes Lodge during the war. The main account is from the website of Franek Rymaszewski who kindly gave permission to quote from his amazing life story and publish his great photos taken locally at the time.

We take up his story at the point when, following his survival of slavery and famine in the Soviet Union, and active war service in Palestine, Egypt and Iraq, he arrived in the UK by a troopship in 1943, at the age of nearly 20 years.

Franek Rymaszewski wrote ‘As a volunteer parachute jumper to occupied Poland and already trained in the Middle East as a radiotelegraph operator, I was posted on arrival to the Special Unit of "Cichociemni" (meaning in Polish "Silent and Unseen" or “dark ones”) in London. This secret unit of the Polish Army in exile created to maintain contact with occupied Poland during World War II and was at the Disposition of the Commander in Chief (C in C) of the Polish Army in the West. It was a secret unit of the Polish Army in Exile created to maintain contact with occupied Poland during World War Two. This unit was liaising with the British Intelligence Department MI6.

From there I was sent for further training to the "Special Unit's Training Centre" in Polmont, near Falkirk, Scotland. In Polmont I attended further courses in radiotelegraphy, international communication codes, use of small arms and explosives, conspiracy methods and diversion, as well as simple parachute jump for non-combatants. Passing the tests and qualifying as a Radiotelegraph Operator First Class, I was soon requested for duties by the Special Radio Unit of the Polish Commander in Chief Staff H.Q. in London and arrived at the radio telegraph station at "Barnes Lodge" near Kings Langley, North London, where I worked receiving underground messages from Poland.

Radio receiving equipment and receiving aerials, and a number of radio receiving and transmitting workstations were installed at Barnes Lodge, where I and other radio telegraph operators worked, while actual transmitters and transmitting aerials were installed a mile and a half away in Chipperfield and cable connected with us. There, in Chipperfield, special crew tuned our transmitters to the required frequencies (changeable for security reasons) as requested by us in Barnes Lodge over direct phone lines.

I have only been to Chipperfield once to see the transmitters and meet the crew. On the left hand side of the road there were two brick and concrete huts. One hut contained six to eight made in the USA 3 kW "Halicrafter" transmitters, and the other hut, I think, housed power generating units. A large house on the right, the Chippendale Lodge, served as living quarters for the crew attending to the transmitters (also at night) and a Technical Platoon doing equipment maintenance and repairs. There was also a team there dealing with erection and maintenance of the radio aerials. So the Lodge was adapted as sleeping quarters, cooking and dining area, some offices and equipment storage and repairs workshop. In early years of the war there was also one radio transmitting station there but it was later moved to growing Barnes Lodge.

The Special Unit at Barnes Lodge had to be on full 24-hour 7 day alert, keeping continuous radio watch and contact in Morse code with the Polish Underground providing intelligence in London which was connected by teleprinter for forwarding telegrams and messages to the Polish Army General Head Quarters in London's Hotel Rubens, the Polish Government in Exile as well as to British War Office. Radio-communication was with agents dropped from England into Poland. It was intensifying and peaked by the end of 1944 during the Warsaw Uprising.

There were eight radio transmitters in the Unit, which were increased to twelve before Warsaw Uprising. Day and night we kept listening to the radio frequencies of the underground radio stations in occupied Poland, ready at any moment to receive and transmit messages whenever agents, risking detection and their lives every time they transmitted a message to London, had the opportunity to call us.

My work roster was 24 hours on stand-by (to assist in case of busy traffic), 24 hours on actual duty (involving 15-20 hours of Morse correspondence) to make sure no messages were missed, and 24 hours of rest. The odd times of those [incoming] messages were due to the risk and danger our secret radio operators were exposed to in Poland. Although we had superior equipment (3 kw transmitters), the work was difficult, because our underground agents had small conspiratorial transmitters whose power was only 50 watts, and often used manual supply of electricity. Sometimes they were hardly audible and difficult to select from a multitude of noises and wartime signals at the given frequency (from planes, tanks, ships, army units, various armies command HQ, etc. etc.). Frequently the weakest signal was the right one, hence our ears had to learn to select these. In spite of this, a "live" personal contact with my occupied homeland during the war, was exciting and it gave me a lot of satisfaction.

From time to time according to the needs of the Polish Homeland Army, "cichociemni" (silent and unseen) radio-telegraph operators from my unit were selected to be dropped in Poland. My colleagues from my Special Unit of "cichociemni" who were dropped to work with the underground as wireless operators were all arrested by Soviets and disappeared. As a result, dropping of young men like myself from England into Poland was stopped because Soviet intentions towards Poland became very clear. The only few survivors who returned to London after the war were those taken as POWs during Warsaw Uprising by the Germans who respected Geneva Convention in contrast to the Soviets. The fate of the Homeland Army men and women and their families was to be hounded and deported, often killed, by the Soviet "liberators".

During Warsaw Uprising in August and September 1944, in which all population of Warsaw took arms against the Germans, the Russians nearby ceased to advance and awaited five months until Warsaw was burnt and destroyed and Polish underground army defeated. Russians did not give any help. They also refused to allow Allied planes which were dropping supplies in Warsaw to land on airfields in Poland "liberated" by Russians. So I remained at the Polish Army H.Q. in London, keeping radio communication with the underground till the end of war. When Soviet installed communist government took over in Poland, we still kept radio contact for a certain period of time with some surviving underground agents. However, it was done secretly because contact with them was now disapproved by the British.’

Franek Rymaszewski also recalled that ‘there were about 40 - 45 men, who were working and living in Barnes Lodge, of which half were actual wireless operators. He wrote ‘Our sleeping quarters were rather cramped. The senior officers, however, were billeted in private homes. Despite the fact that all the buildings in Barnes Lodge were occupied by the Polish soldiers, the vegetable garden was taken care of by Mr Percy Rush, [also listed in the 1939 Register] a pre-war gardener who lived there in a little house at the entrance to Barnes Lodge grounds from the road then known as A41. He was paid from our unit's budget and was figured in our register as a "civilian clerk" and, as before the war, he was bringing to our kitchen the gathered vegetables which added a variety to our board. [Percy's work as a gardener was despite losing a foot in World War One!] 

Another civilian who visited us daily except Sundays was a young local girl called Sylvia, very nice and pleasant girl in her very early twenties. She served the meals in our dining room. I don't remember her last name. There was a pathway, slightly inclined uphill, that led from the road to the side of Barnes Lodge where a yard, storehouses, etc. were. Just before that, the footpath had a branch to the left leading to the porch entrance of the Lodge, visible on one of the photos. The pathway was firm and wide enough for the Army lorries to drive on.

Franek Rymaszewski also recalled that ‘there were about 40 - 45 men, who were working and living in Barnes Lodge, of which half were actual wireless operators. He wrote ‘Our sleeping quarters were rather cramped. The senior officers, however, were billeted in private homes. Despite the fact that all the buildings in Barnes Lodge were occupied by the Polish soldiers, the vegetable garden was taken care of by Mr Percy Rush, [also listed in the 1939 Register] a pre-war gardener who lived there in a little house at the entrance to Barnes Lodge grounds from the road then known as A41. He was paid from our unit's budget and was figured in our register as a "civilian clerk" and, as before the war, he was bringing to our kitchen the gathered vegetables which added a variety to our board.

Another civilian who visited us daily except Sundays was a young local girl called Sylvia, very nice and pleasant girl in her very early twenties. She served the meals in our dining room. I don't remember her last name. There was a pathway, slightly inclined uphill, that led from the road to the side of Barnes Lodge where a yard, storehouses, etc. were. Just before that, the footpath had a branch to the left leading to the porch entrance of the Lodge, visible on one of the photos. The pathway was firm and wide enough for the Army lorries to drive on.

This area of outer London was within range of German rockets, the so called Flying Bombs (V1) which in August and September 1944 flew over Chipperfield and Kings Langley quite often. During its horizontal flight such a bomb was giving out a specific noise, similar to an old motorcycle. Only when the sound disappeared, the bomb begun to fall. Fortunately most of them flew somewhere north. It happened only once early morning, when most personnel in Chipperfield Lodge were still asleep, when V1 bomb fell on the right side of the main road from Kings Langley close to Chipperfield Lodge. Luckily nothing serious happened, only in the corner rooms of the Lodge closest to the explosion all windows felled [sic] out. Neither the two huts containing powerful transmitters on the opposite side of the road nor the antennas located on nearby fields were damaged. Later, the new German rockets V2, which without any warning were falling vertically, were more well-aimed, but they were usually dropped in central London and not in outer areas.

With regard to meeting up with the locals, we had irregular routine because of the 24 hour work. So in our time off some men slept, few bought bicycles on which they explored the neighbourhood, some boys made friends with local girls of course, and two to three resulted in marriage. Some soldiers went to pictures in Hemel Hempstead, but most often to the big Odeon in Watford. There, at intervals between screenings a huge electric organ appeared, rising from the cellar, and some Dandy played popular melodies, equally traditional English, or Scottish, as well as hits from the movies, and the public sung them with great keenness.

Other guys went to the pub in Two Waters or was it Two Towers, but most often to the Old Fellow's Arms in Apsley. Many went to a dance on Saturday night in some local hall in Apsley. These dances were very popular and the hall was always very crowded, so we called the place "Murder House". The females attending the dances were usually working girls from a nearby Dickinson's paper factory. More choosy guys travelled to Saturday night dances at Watford Town Hall. However, they had male competition there, as most attending men were well paid American Servicemen.

Wladek Blasiak also served at Barnes Lodge, He was an accomplished wood crafter and sculptor who settled in Kings Langley marrying Beryl Chandler.

Czeslaw Zygmunt, who also married a local girl lived in Watford and provided another first hand account of the local wartime Polish connection. He worked at Chipperfield Lodge from December 1942 to March 1943 as a radio technician/telegrapher with contacts in occupied France. There were, he recalled about 12 radio transmitters just off Whippendale Hill next to a prefabricated building at a suitable distance from the other equipment at Chipperfield Lodge. These transmitters were later moved to Barnes Lodge. While at Chipperfield he enjoyed lunches at the Two Brewers otherwise it was self catering. He said that he was made very welcome by the local people. According to Czeslaw Zygmunt both Chipperfield and Barnes Lodge were part of the Polish radio centre (General Staff) at Dower House Stanmore later demolished. Franek Rymaszewski had also noted that ‘the conspiratorial transmitters and receivers that we used in Poland were designed and produced by our own Radio Workshop in Stanmore.’ Czeslaw Zygmunt also lived at Barnes Lodge at times from 1944 to the end of the war where there was always a bed and food for him. At one time he shared his room there with a Polish soldier who had escaped from Colditz who, as part of the work at Barnes Lodge, was debriefed on how one survived in occupied countries.

Another name we have is that of the renowned cryptographer Henryk Zygalski who lodged in Bovingdon and also worked at Barnes Lodge (previously Shendish Dower House) rather than at Bletchley Park.

Report from the WATFORD OBSERVER  undated c2000?

Was Whippendell House, Chipperfield, used by the Polish Navy during the war as a   Y listening station linked to Bletchley Park?

Was there a war-time training centre for military intelligence in a house, which is understood to have been demolished subsequently, just off Kings Langley High Street?

Czeslaw Zygmunt, of Ridge Lane, Watford, contacted me, and this is his information.

'The house in Kings Langley was Barnes Lodge and the house in Chipperfield was Chipperfield Lodge.

I worked from December 1942 to the Spring of 1943 as a radio technician...

Both buildings were part of the Polish radio centre (general staff) and the headquarters were at Dower House, Stanmore, which has also been demolished.

It was mostly a Polish enterprise. Poland was occupied and things were going on there like extermination and concentration camps.

I was being trained as a radio telegraphist dealing with occupied France and I went to Chipperfield Lodge to start with.

There was a prefabricated building on the left of Whippendell Hill with about a dozen radio transmitters. They were there because they had to be distanced from receivers at Chipperfield Lodge.

Otherwise you would have a load of electrical problems. These were eventually moved to Barnes Lodge in Kings Langley-

I was at Chipperfield Lodge for three months and we had lunches in the Two Brewers. We used to prepare our dinners our-selves, which was an interesting experiment.

The villagers made us very welcome and were very kind. I think it must have been very hard for the English people, whose boys were out in North Africa and such, seeing these Polish soldiers having lunch at the local pub and not appearing to be doing much.

And we couldn't tell them and frankly, we did not know too much more ourselves, other than our own special tasks.:

I also attended Barnes Lodge, from 1944 until the end of the war, where there was always a bed and food for me. They were transmitting messages from the general staff.

You have to realise that originally Stalin. invaded Poland along with Hitler and then 'later, following the invasion of Russia by Germany, Stalin became an ally..

But Stalin regarded us Polish as enemies and Churchill would not have liked us inter- cepting messages from Stalin, so we were not connected to Bletchley Park, as far as I know. But we did pass on relevant information to the general staff.

As I understood it, the Y-listening posts in your question, were at Boxmoor.

At Barnes Lodge for instance, I had in my room an escaped Polish soldier from Colditz, who had to be debriefed on how you survived in occupied countries. That was the sort of work we were involved in.

After the war, I married a Watford girl. We couldn't go back to Poland. The risk was high that we, who had been in intelligence, would have been locked up. Some of the Poles did not return from the Soviet Gulags until 1956.

I married and settled in the area. It was a hard life to start with but we celebrated our golden wedding anniversary recently and we are very happy here. We have two children and two grandchildren.'