Back entrance to Briggens House golf club - geograph

Briggens House is a

Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

18th-century house and parklands near the village of Roydon,

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. It has a number of features from the garden designer

Charles Bridgeman Charles Bridgeman (1690–1738) was an English garden designer who helped pioneer the naturalistic landscape style. Although he was a key figure in the transition of English garden design from the Anglo-Dutch formality of patterned parterres an ...

from 1720. There are also some remains of the pleasure gardens developed by Lord Hunsden in 1908.

1700-1800

The house was first built and owned by Sir Thomas Foster whose descendant sold it to the Crowley family. Robert Chester, a director of the

South Sea Company The South Sea Company (officially The Governor and Company of the merchants of Great Britain, trading to the South Seas and other parts of America, and for the encouragement of the Fishery) was a British joint-stock company founded in Ja ...

bought it in 1706 who made many substantial changes to the house and grounds, commissioning

to work on the gardens.

1940s: Special Operations Executive (Polish Section)

The house was owned by the 4th Baron Aldenham Walter Gibbs the Deputy Chairman of

Westminster Bank Westminster Bank was a British retail bank which operated in England and Wales from 1834 until its merger into the National Westminster Bank in 1970; it continued to exist as a dormant registered non-trading company until 4 July 2017 when it ...

. From 1941, Briggens House was used by the

Special Operations Executive The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a secret British World War II organisation. It was officially formed on 22 July 1940 under Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton, from the amalgamation of three existing secret organisations. Its pu ...

(SOE) as the main forgery operation to support their secret agents List of SOE agents and undercover

special forces Special forces and special operations forces (SOF) are military units trained to conduct special operations. NATO has defined special operations as "military activities conducted by specially designated, organized, selected, trained and equip ...

. When the house was requisitioned by the

War Office The War Office was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the new Ministry of Defence (MoD). This article contains text from ...

the family was allowed to stay in residence which was very rare in cases such as this.

STS 38 Polish Training Section

The house was requisitioned to train elite fighting troops known as the

Cichociemni ''Cichociemni'' (; the "Silent Unseen") were elite special-operations paratroopers of the Polish Army in exile, created in Great Britain during World War II to operate in occupied Poland (''Cichociemni Spadochroniarze Armii Krajowej''). Kazimierz ...

, (Silent and Unseen) selected from the

Polish Home Army The Home Army ( pl, Armia Krajowa, abbreviated AK; ) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) esta ...

that had escaped to Britain. They trained in hand to hand combat, sabotage, and subversive activities, etc. Those who passed awaited their turn to be dropped back into

Nazi occupied Poland Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Naz ...

wearing civilian clothing, using fake identities and forged papers. They then faced a long flight in potentially hazardous weather conditions over well defended enemy held territory, a parachute drop at night and locating a reception committee on the ground before leading and organising resistance groups against a vicious and brutal enemy. Eventually, the whole training unit was transferred to STS 43

Audley End Audley End House is a largely early 17th-century country house outside Saffron Walden, Essex, England. It is a prodigy house, known as one of the finest Jacobean houses in England. Audley End is now one-third of its original size, but is st ...

when Station XIV - False Document Section expanded and took over the whole of Briggens House.

SOE – Station XIV - False Document Section

This section was begun by three Polish forgers in the cellar of Briggens House, and quickly expanded when SOE obtained Britain’s most experienced printers, engravers and artists. This unique group was recruited and led by Commanding Officer Captain Morton Grainger Bisset, a highly specialised printer, to provide a multitude of forged documents to enable agents with false identities to operate in occupied countries without being captured. The passports, identity cards, work permits, ration books and driving licences needed to be perfect to fool the Nazi SS and police at border and random check-points. Any small discrepancy could lead to instant arrest, interrogation, torture and ultimately a firing squad. Documents were provided for agents such as

Violette Szabo Violette Reine Elizabeth Szabo, GC ( née Bushell; 26 June 1921 – February 1945) was a British-French Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent during the Second World War and a posthumous recipient of the George Cross. On her second mission ...

, and

F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas Wing Commander Forest Frederick Edward Yeo-Thomas, (17 June 1902 – 26 February 1964), known as "Tommy", was a British Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent in the Second World War. Codenamed "Seahorse" and "Shelley" in the SOE, Yeo-Thomas ...

, the 'White Rabbit'. The team included

Scotland Yard Scotland Yard (officially New Scotland Yard) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's 32 boroughs, but not the City of London, the square mile that forms London's ...

handwriting and other printing experts to run an almost 'same-day delivery service' for documents, being able to copy documents and return them before they have been identified as missing. The

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

were aware of their work. A study found that the forgers’ versions of ration cards were so good they could not easily be detected. The team also produced 43 million zloty that were dropped into occupied

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

in 1944 to disrupt the economy. By the war’s end, Briggens had produced 275,000 forged documents.

Current

In 1979 the house was converted into an hotel and conference centre with a separate golf club occupying the parkland. The hotel closed its doors In 2006. In 2010 it reopened as a wedding venue but this did not have planning permission and was immediately closed down. As of November 2019 the house remains closed to the public but the golf course is still in place.

References