June 2, 2010

HIGHWORTH, 26 May 2010 (Swindon Advertiser) – LYING just outside of Highworth, this palatial mansion kept one of the country’s most closely-guarded secrets during World War Two.

Thousands of men were trained at Coleshill House during the 1940s to form the backbone of a British resistance movement in the event that Hitler’s Nazis had successfully invaded the UK.

Now, thanks to a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of nearly £28,000, more people will have the chance to learn about the Auxiliary Unit, whose headquarters were at Coleshill House, which was destroyed in a fire shortly after the war.

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The National Trust now manages and cares for the grounds where the Auxiliers received guerrilla training in survival skills, weaponry and sabotage techniques.

Over long weekends, small numbers of trainees would arrive to spend the next two days receiving instruction in explosives and unarmed combat. At night they were transported into the surrounding countryside and left to find their way back in the dark. An estimated 3000 men were trained here, who then went on to recruit others into the British resistance.

Highworth postmistress Mabel Stranks was key to the whole operation, becoming an essential part of Winston Churchill’s secret Auxiliary Unit from her position in the town’s High Street, where she security checked all trainees. For four years, from 1940 to 1944, she organised the training of more than 2,000 men at the secret location.

Read the enitre article here at the Swindon Advertiser

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