Rupert Baker visits a new museum of World War II history, in a house which originally belonged to a Fellow of the Royal Society.
One of our favourite family walks is to Trent Park, a couple of miles west of us across the London Borough of Enfield.
For the past few years, the ‘big house’ at the centre of the park has been hidden by scaffolding. On a recent ramble we were finally able to access the refurbished building, now the site of a fascinating new museum of World War II secrets. Here, I came across a link to an eighteenth-century Fellow of the Royal Society.
(author’s photo)
The rolling parkland was originally part of Enfield Chase, the extensive hunting grounds of King Henry V. Despite resistance from commoners who had been entitled to grazing rights on the land for centuries, an act of enclosure in 1777 divided up tracts between private leaseholders, one of whom was Sir Richard Jebb (1729-1787), a medical doctor highly esteemed by the reigning monarch, King George III.
Richard Jebb, by Johann Zoffany, ca.1770 (RCP; public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Unsurprisingly, a quick check on our database of past Fellows confirmed that such a well-connected medical man was a Fellow of the Royal Society – here’s his biographical record. Jebb was elected to the Fellowship in 1765, his certificate of candidature referring to him as ‘Doctor of Physic and Physician to St George's hospital. [A] Gentleman of great merit, & well versed in various branches of usefull learning’:
Born in London in 1729, Richard Jebb graduated as a doctor from Marischal College, Aberdeen, in 1751. He took up a place as physician to Westminster Hospital in 1754, and was admitted as a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) the following year. The move to St George’s Hospital came in 1762, leading to his admission to the Royal Society.
Having established a lucrative private medical practice, Jebb became a Fellow of the RCP in 1771, and in 1777 was summoned to Italy to attend the ailing Duke of Gloucester, younger brother of George III, in Trento. Hence the naming of the house, as explained by this museum caption:
(© Trent Park House of Secrets)
Jebb commissioned the design of his new Enfield villa from the King’s architect Sir William Chambers FRS, who was also the designer of Somerset House, home to the Royal Society from 1780 to 1857. Despite his royal recognition (he was created a baronet in 1778) and increasing wealth, however, there were clouds: Jebb’s biography in the RCP Munk’s Roll includes this description of his character by his friendly rival John Coakley Lettsom FRS:
‘He was the unhappy slave of unhappy passions. His own sister is, and has long been, in a madhouse; the same fate attends his cousin, and a little adversity would have placed poor Sir Richard there also. There was an impetuosity in his manner, a wildness in his look, and sometimes a strange confusion in his head, which often made me tremble for his sensorium.’
Jebb’s brief, final and highest appointment, from 1786 until his death the following year, was as personal physician to King George III, whose own ‘strange confusion in his head’ was yet to come. Jebb was buried in Westminster Abbey, and Trent Park House underwent various additions and changes of ownership until, in 1908, the lease was bought by the businessman Sir Edward Sassoon. His son inherited the property on his father’s death four years later and purchased the freehold in 1923.
The current imposing mansion was greatly expanded and remodelled in early-Georgian style by this new owner, the politician and socialite Sir Philip Sassoon; a bow on the north front is the only remaining feature of Jebb’s much more modest villa. When we visited the house in late summer, our first impression was of the sunny opulence of the ground floor rooms, where the flamboyant host entertained a succession of distinguished guests. However, Sassoon died aged only 50 in June 1939, and on the outbreak of World War II in September, the house was requisitioned by the government and given a very different role, alluded to in the title of the new museum: ‘Trent Park House of Secrets’.
During the war, high-ranking German prisoners of war were held there in conditions of great luxury, even extending to a private library of books ‘borrowed’ from the mothballed German Embassy in Carlton House Terrace, now home to the Royal Society. Unbeknown to the prisoners, however, the rooms of the mansion were bugged. ‘Stool pigeons’ in German uniform – often refugees from Nazi Germany – posed as fellow captives, steering the generals and senior officers into revealing conversations which were recorded by a team of secret listeners hidden in the basement.
The museum now gives access to these basement rooms, complete with replicas of the black acetate discs and cutting machines used to record the chatter from on high, and display panels telling the stories of the British intelligence officers and listeners who worked there. I don’t think I spotted the names of any further Royal Society Fellows – other than Sir Winston Churchill, of course, who is also mentioned ‘upstairs’ as one of Sassoon’s regular house guests – but there are strong parallels with the work of Alan Turing FRS at Bletchley Park, another vital intelligence project which remained secret till long after the war ended. On departure, I was pleased to see that the gift shop had several copies of a book also found on our shelves: an updated edition of Most Secret War by Reginald Victor Jones FRS, a classic sourcebook on secret World War II research.
I highly recommend a visit to Enfield’s newest museum, set in lovely parkland and with an excellent café attached. Whether your interests lie in architectural history, Brideshead-style interwar opulence or World War II intelligence, you’ll enjoy a trip to ‘the house that Jebb began’. Spread the word once you’ve visited – it’s too good to remain a secret!
