WBR’s latest exploits have led us to Highworth, in the north-east of Wiltshire. This pretty Cotswold town was planted in the 13^th century with a market place, main street and a church behind, laid out in a regular pattern. The property boundaries of the original burgage plots are still to be seen preserved in the modern boundaries.

We were called to look at 23 High Street, coincidentally just next door to the rather spectacular Inigo House, (which had no connection with Inigo Jones by the way, it is merely a very distinguished-looking town house) which Wiltshire Buildings Record looked at two years before.

No. 23 High Street, Highworth

No. 23, like Inigo House, is a grade II* listed building. Unlike Inigo House, though, no. 23 is special for a different reason. It was once the Greyhound Inn in the 18^th century, and before that it was known as the Three Cuppes in the 17^th century. No trace now remains of its previous incarnation as a hostelry with a malthouse at the rear. The latter was swept away by a wave of new housing, dividing up the old double burgage plot. The shop was a bakers in the later 19^th century, whilst the family lived on the upper floor.

By 1918 the shop became a post office run by George Stranks. It is in this war period that the post office came to the fore in the protection of England during the second world war, and the reason it is especially honoured by English Heritage. By 1920, Mabel Annie Stranks, probably the widow of George, was named in Kelly’s Directory as postmistress, and she remained in that role until at least 1950. During the Second World War Mrs. Stranks acted as the intermediary in all postings to the school of resistance training at Coleshill House nearby.

Every weekend a batch of Auxiliary Unit patrol members would report for intensive training via the post office. Mrs Stranks would satisfy herself as to the mens’ identities and telephone Coleshill to come and collect their ‘parcel’.

Sadly, Coleshill House is no more. The grounds were secluded so were ideal for the training of auxiliaries in high explosives and sabotage techniques. The official training manual was disguised as ‘The Countryman’s Diary’ which advertised ‘Highworth’s Fertilisers’, an oblique hint as to the real business at hand.

Mrs Stranks’ contribution to the war effort has been immortalised on the front of the building. Sunk into the wall above the triangular pediment is a brown plaque documenting this brief event in the building’s long history. As building recorders, it is our job to peer into the past to inform the present, so that the jumble of features of inevitably different periods acquire meaning. In this case nothing tangible remains of that secret past except on paper, and a brown plaque.

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