Ruislip Woods | Battle of Britain House

My phone rang one day last March. I didn’t seem to recognize the number. These days, I tend to communicate via email, social media and a multitude of internet messengers, so receiving a direct call is a bit unexpected. And when I do, it’s usually wrong numbers, cold automated calls, or bad news…

But I was soon delighted to find out it was none of that – at all. The caller was Mr Miles Gillman of Northwood, a Friend of Ruislip Woods and trustee of the Ruislip Woods Trust. Having just read through a recent article of mine about the Battle of Britain House that went out with the RWT Newsletter, he went on to congratulate me about the write, and the renewed interest it has sparked over the history of the ruined mansion in Ruislip Woods. He also seemed eager to share his own experience of the site, as well as a very interesting theory about the mansion : for he had reasons to suspect that an underground Cold War bunker may have existed nearby.

“Will you show me?!” I asked, instantly hooked on the prospect of peeling back more layers of the history of the mansion. We promptly set up a meetup at the woods for late April.

The meetup

I met Mr Gillman, Miles, at the mansion’s steps on a sunny Saturday morning. He was in great spirits, and happy to be back to Ruislip Woods after quite some time. I was equally delighted with the opportunity to meet him and record his story. I was in for a treat !

We proceeded to a clearing next to the mansion and its car park. It is an area as big as an average garden, and reasonably flat. Miles remembers the existence of a hut there : he describes it as a cabin with a lower and an upper level, and perhaps a balcony. I am instantly reminded of the Annexe, an outhouse which used to accommodate the students, au-pairs and other guests that lodged at the Battle of Britain House :

“There still remained another newer building in the grounds which had been used as a
dormitory and not touched by the fire, but in spite of being boarded up it was eventuallyvandalised and had to be demolished”
Colin Bowlt
Ruislip, Northwood & Eastcote Local History Society 2011 Journal

An artists’ impression of the Annexe from a 1960s leaflet

This Annexe was clearly a later building, possibly post-war. It would have been erected during a time when the mansion was transitioning to its new utility as a residential college. And then Miles dropped a proverbial bomb : he maintains that the Annexe might have been a cover for a Cold-War era ROTOR Station.

ROTOR and the Cold War

A few words about ROTOR (which as far as I’m aware is a code name, rather than an acronym). In the early days of the Cold war, one of the the greatest threats posed to Britain was from Soviet bombers performing a potential sneak nuclear attack. The Soviets had acquired U.S. long range bomber technology since 1945, when on four separate occasions, B-29 Superfortress bombers crash landed in Siberia on their return from bombing raids over Japan. The Soviets surveyed the wrecks and proceeded to reverse engineer an exact clone of the B29 into what would become their own Tupolev Tu-4 in 1947. By 1951, the Soviets had also being successful in detonating an air dropped nuclear device, code named RDS-3. It was nearly 3 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb.

Uncanny similarities (photo sources here and here)

This was the threat the ROTOR system was meant to counter. It utilized elements of the existing Chain Home early warning system, consolidated and upgraded with the latest Radar technology, a new command and communications structure, and all new, nuclear bomb-proof installations that comprised an underground bunker with a distinctive bungalow on top to serve as living quarters for the operators. The ROTOR bunker hut’s design was very distinctive, probably the outcome of a common blueprint.

The ROTOR hut at Kelvedon Hatch vis-a-vis the Annexe at Ruislip Woods

There certainly are differences and similarities here, but it’s difficult to establish a match as the Ruslip Woods hut is now long gone. What remains, however, is the wide flat area where the Annexe once stood, which still remains mysteriously clear from the large trees and thick foliage of the area immediately surrounding it. So could there be something underneath?

It’s difficult to tell. Miles has visited the site a number of times with friends from Subterranea Brittanica , a well known project that have been charting Britain’s underground heritage for decades. They also speculate that the Annexe may have resembled a typical ROTOR hut. Yet there should have been other visible clues, like ventilation shafts or solid bases for Radar dishes and other above ground elements – but there are none visible. Although maybe these are still around, somewhere out of sight. Or maybe they have been removed, or covered by nature over the years.

ROTOR guard hut at RAF Goldsborough, Yorkshire / image © from OneLife – 28 Day Later

Today, the location of every ROTOR site in Britain is public domain, but as you might expect, Ruislip Woods doesn’t feature. So was there ever anything there, after all? Miles suggests that metal detectors or a ground penetrating radar might be the only way to answer that question. And I have some eyebrow-raising questions of my own. For someone has told me in confidence how there has been top secret training taking place at the Battle of Britain House well into the 60s, and it had to do with radar technology… And another testimony has emerged, vividly describing the gruff looking military men who attended courses at the mansion during the same period… I will be relating these stories in detail on future posts. All will be revealed !

In the end, the post-war technology race saw the Soviets and the Western Allies constantly vying to top each other. Faster, jet powered nuclear bombers were being built, prompting the need for earlier warning and better radars to upgrade ROTOR with. By 1959 the Soviets had successfully launched their first intercontinental ballistic missile, soon to be armed with nuclear weapons. This new technology, and the proliferation of nuclear armed missiles that came with it changed the strategic defense outlook dramatically. There was no point in maintaining a complex system to warn about a bomber – or ten – entering one’s airspace. If there was an attack, the Soviets would do well to throw everything at it, every bomber and every missile, eventually overwhelming the defenses. So the new doctrine aimed to detect missiles at launch, and hopefully prompt an immediate retaliatory response within the 15 to 25 minutes it’d take for the Soviet blow to land. So in the 60s, the ROTOR system was abandoned in favour of airborne and over-the-horizon radar systems that could detect a missile launch thousands of miles away.

The Ice House

We now found ourselves walking along the old driveway towards the Ducks Hill road gatehouse, talking excitedly about rumours and possibilities. I felt compelled to ask Miles whether he might know what those mysterious stone walls built against and earth bank were, so close to the old gatehouse and driveway? He believes those are the remains of an Ice House that may have existed here. (I regret that for all the times I’ve seen the remains of those stone walls, I couldn’t find a single picture in my collection – but I promise I will as soon as I visit the site again).

Ice House at Ruislip Woods / Battle of Britain House — The Ice House. Maybe.

Before the invention of refrigeration, people depended on ice houses to preserve perishables. Those were underground stone or brick chambers packed with ice brought in from frozen lakes or rivers in the winter, or sometimes imported from as far as Scandinavia. The thick walls of the structure coupled with the lower underground temperature meant that ice could last from winter to winter before it needed replenishment, providing businesses and important households with adequate refrigeration all year around. There are still many surviving examples in the UK.

A typical ice house at Eglinton Country Park, Scotland / image source : Wikipedia Commons

So could these indeed the remains of an Ice House? Perhaps. The mansion was a stately home, and a farmhouse before that. Ruislip Woods were famed for the game that could once be hunted there, particularly pheasants, that may have been hunted there up to the 1930’s. So it is possible that a cold storage might have once existed, at least until there wasn’t a need for one anymore. At any case, it is great to finally have a working theory about the mysterious stone wall next to the driveway.

The Shooting Range

Our next stop is the part of the woods adjacent to the Battle of Britain House, roughly between the ruin and Poor’s Field. Soon, we come across a sizable horseshoe-shaped mound. It looks like what it might have been : a firing range for the agents who trained in Ruislip Woods during the war.

I’d seen photos of it through the years, but never got to see it in person before today. And it is surprising that I’ve missed it, having unknowingly walked next to it several times ! Firearms training would have been integral to the agents’ preparation for para-dropping into enemy territory. Their weapons of choice would be the British Sten gun or its US counterpart M3 (often referred to as the Grease Gun). Miles showed me one of the spent cartridge cases that have been found in the vicinity of the range.

A spent cartridge case from Ruislip Woods

It is an amazing find that demonstrates the possible use of this area for discharging firearms. I’ve read that metal detectorists have found a fake hand grenade that would have been used for throw training in the same vicinity a few years back.

I am not an expert, but at first glance it looks like a rimmed cartridge case (meaning without a characteristic flange around its base). This fact might limit the search for the weapon type drastically, but corrosion didn’t help in this case, since the cap markings are totally illegible. If you know of an expert who can identify the cartridge case, please do ask them to get in touch.

The Pumping House

And there were yet more discoveries to be made. In the near distance, past a picture-perfect bluebell clearing, I could see the outline of a brick structure. Getting closer, it was evident that this wasn’t a living space : it looked rather like a workshop or machine room. Miles believes that this used to be a Pumping House, possibly to mechanically draw water from a nearby source.

And there is mention of such a venture in local history groups – one that has led to misadventure, so to speak. In 1942, the Colne Valley Water Company (the precursor to Three Valleys Water) committed to establish a water well in this part of the woods. The drilling was successful, but didn’t yield the expected amount of water. Towards the end of the war, it was decided to bore an additional tunnel which roughly followed the contour of the Northern side of the Ruislip Lido reservoir into Poor’s Field. A pumping station was built to aid in the extraction of water from the well.

A crank shaft cradle? at the pumping station

However, the water yield from the well remained unsatisfactory, despite the mechanical aid. And to make things worse, mysterious swallow holes began appearing close to the Ruislip Lido. According to geologists, these dangerous holes were a result of the collapse of the layers of chalk under Poor’s Field. There were 6 or more such collapses between 1944 and the early 1960s’, all in connection to the operation of the well and the changes it brought about to the geology of the woods. That fact and the low yield eventually led to the well being abandoned.

An underground chamber filled with water and debris

Today, the abandoned pumping station is testament to this failed effort to extract water at Ruislip Woods. It is an interesting ruin, especially once one becomes aware of what it represents. It is quite possible that the underground opening may lead to a tunnel under Poor’s Field – however I would absolutely not recommend trying to explore it. No-one knows what dangers may lie down there, not least the danger of collapse which I have already mentioned.

The way back

Our one-hour was up, and we started making our way back to the car park. But Miles Gillman’s storytelling didn’t abate. Inspired by the stories of bunkers and tunnels under the woods, we discussed about other local rumours and landmarks, such as the (now permanently closed) Pinner Chalk Mines as well as other known or suspected tunneling and mining efforts under our feet here in Hillingdon. It’ll suffice to say that some of us might have tunnels running under our gardens – about which we have no idea about ! It was a great discussion that certainly merits its own dedicated post and research.

As we went past the mansion on our way to the car park, Miles produced another interesting item : fragments of china recovered from the woods near the Battle of Britain House. These were probably part of a platter or dining plate, but otherwise difficult to tell how significant they were, or even whether these belonged to the crockery of Battle of Britain House. Miles remembers how in the days before recycling, it wasn’t uncommon for households to dispose of broken household items near their gardens. It is another interesting theory, and if it’s true, then there must be a potential treasure trove of fragments and other items close to where these were found! It’s yet another fascinating avenue of exploration that may yield more insights into the past of the ruined mansion at Ruislip Woods.

I am grateful to Mr Miles Gillman for being generous with his time, and for the interesting stories, artifacts and locations he shared.

For those interested in further detail, the story of the Ruislip Woods water well and pumping house has been described in great depth on the 1998 Ruislip, Northwood & Eascote Local Hisotry Society journal.

Secret agent training, the TOOL Missions, and Cold War mistrust : The latest revelations about the Battle of Britain House in Ruislip Woods.

Abandoned signs of past existence always fascinated me. First the excitement of discovery, then the mystery, and ultimately the revelation that comes with meticulous research. Suddenly, out of a tiny part, comes an astonishing whole, and the past reveals itself to us in glorious detail. When I first happened upon the ruins of Battle of Britain House in 2018, it was just a pile of rubble in the woods. But today, it feels like a site of significant (if overlooked) historic importance, with a story whose fascinating details can be traced from our local Ruislip Woods to the last days of the 3rd Reich in Berlin, from Canadian internment camps to South Virginian top secret facilities, from cosmopolitan interwar Osaka to the glamour of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Wealthy heiresses, globetrotting playboys, Danish farmers, health & wellness pioneers, secret agents – the Battle of Britain House has truly seen it all.

Among those intertwining stories, perhaps the most fascinating narrative is the one about the role of Ruislip’s (then called) Franklin Mansion during the War. Requisitioned by the Ministry of Works at the outbreak of World War 2, the mansion would become a training centre where the tactical aspect of the new collaboration between the British Secret Intelligence Service and the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (later CIA) would take place. Many aspects of this intelligence relationship still remain a mystery nearly 80 years on. The declassification of top secret files under Freedom of Information legislation is a gradual process. But each time a file, a photo or a record comes to light, a new aspect is revealed, and previously unheard stories emerge from the Fog of Time.

One of the earliest revelations of Ruilsip being used for the training of OSS agents came in Joseph E. Persico’s 1971 Piercing the Reich. It was one of the first books to describe the formative days of the OSS and the giant steps it took with the help of the SIS here, in London. Persico extracted rigorous detail from the available data and first person accounts, even revealing the daily lives and practices of the agents training for those seemingly impossible missions.

Battle of Britain House Ruislip Woods — London’s Area F (perhaps for Franklin) has since been identified by some authors to be the mansion known as the Battle of Britain House

As more and more records are revealed, researchers are enabled to access and evaluate the records , furthering our knowledge about what took place at the mansion in Ruislip Woods during the war. One of the most important breakthroughs happened in recent years with the publication of the memoir of Joseph Gould, an OSS officer who arrived to London shortly after the invasion of Normandy in June 1944. His orders were to recruit and train agents for top secret missions behind enemy lines, a need that became even more pressing after the massive German counterattack called the Battle of The Bulge in December 1944, when the Allies realised they were heading into Germany with little or no intelligence to support their operations. What was the actual strength of the Nazi Army, after all? What was the state of their industry? How was the German people’s morale and their will to carry on? Were rumours of a National Redoubt at the Bavarian mountains true, and did Hitler have more Wonder Weapons up his sleeve?

With the entire Allied effort at stake, Joseph Gould was sent incognito to London, tasked with locating and recruiting … Germans. Yes, London during the war had become a hotbed for German dissidents who had escaped Nazi Germany in the late 30s. Artists, homosexuals, trade unionists – many of those who didn’t fit Hitler’s terrible vision and had managed to escape via the so called Czechoslovak Corridor found refuge here, organising in societies such as London’s Free Germans. They were an assortment of secretive groups that met, discussed, and planned for Germany’s day after. It was among German Socialist workers that Gould found his cadre of recruits : ordinary, working class people with no prior military training. The daring plan devised by the OSS was for those men to parachute into Germany using false identities, mingle with the population, gather intelligence using the techniques learned at Franklin House, and report back via the cutting edge (for the time) technology provided to them.

Joseph Gould and TOOL agents in Rusilip, UK — Joseph Gould (Left) with TOOL mission trainees at Franklin House, Ruislip

The TOOL missions were codenamed after, well, tools : There was BUZZSAW, HAMMER, JIGSAW and so on. The Free Germans were to be paradropped into their hometowns in places like the Ruhr Valley, Leipzig, or Berlin, and report back with local intelligence. Many of them never made it through, neither the air crews that transported them. Some others were captured by the Soviets, their fate remaining unknown until after the Cold War ended in 1991. But some of them were successful, returning to a blacked-out, besieged Berlin like revenants one night in March 1945 after a decade of absence – to the disbelief of their relatives.

Sadly, the TOOL missions men who readily risked their lives to help the Allied effort didn’t fare very well after the end of the war. Being staunch Communists, they became unwelcome in Great Britain and other allied states as Cold War paranoia intensified. Most of them found their way to East Germany, where they were also treated with mistrust, having previously associated themselves with the OSS and SIS. Their effort and sacrifice remains largely unrecognised to this day. We are very lucky to know their story, including evidence of their presence in Rusilip, by virtue of the memoir of Joseph Gould named An OSS Officer’s Own WW II Story: Of His Seven German Agents and Their Five Labor Desk Missions into Warring Germany which was recently published by his son.

Gould’s memoir is a fantastic primary source, but there’s further testimony to the story of the Free Germans and their activity in the UK. Not least their extensive, and now declassified intelligence files, pieced together by reports from the Metropolitan Police and Secret Service who tracked their activities (along with those of all foreign nationals originating from enemy countries). Much of my expansive archive of the Battle of Britain House can be accessed and downloaded in the Members Area which is expanded & updated frequently.

Where’s Fischer? A declassified 1950 Home Office memo in reference to the whereabouts of Werner Fischer, one of the TOOL agents that paradropped into Germany. The Special Branch confirms they’ve lost track of him, and he’s presumed to be in the USA . The truth about Fischer’s whereabouts was very different, and was only revealed after the end of the Cold War in 1991.

It is said that the use of the mansion for military training may have have continued into the Cold War. There are claims (..which I cannot confirm or deny..) that secret allied technology training took place there around the early 60s. Maybe another story to write about after its declassified ! Until that time comes, I welcome you to join me for a deep dive into the astonishing history of the Battle of Britain House in Ruislip Woods by joining me on one of my regular walks, available to book on this page and/or join the Facebook Group dedicated to the history of the mansion.

Battle of Britain House

Tag Archives: Ruislip Woods

A walk with Miles Gillman