The runaway rumours of priest who 'spied for the Nazis'
A Shropshire aviation historian is trying to unravel what he has dubbed the "Scampton Mystery" involving a parish priest allegedly spying on goings-on at a nearby RAF base which later became home of the famous Dambusters.
According to lurid rumour, an RAF officer – later charged with treason and executed – was in league with the village rector who had a wireless transmitter in the steeple of his church to send messages to the Germans.
Rob Davis from Telford says he has managed to establish that the stories are 80 per cent folklore, but that when he began his researches some people were reluctant to speak, and he has since had trouble accessing records.
"The research started about 30 years ago and all the contributors are sadly deceased now," said Rob.
"I never got to the bottom of it."
Central to the story is Father Harold Eustace Bertram Nye, who became rector of Scampton, a village near Lincoln, in 1924.
Nye was a supporter of Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts – the British Union of Fascists.
"Father Nye's parishioners, perhaps with village clannishness, looked upon him as a harmless political eccentric. His political leanings were not taken seriously in the parish until after the outbreak of war."
