Teenage convent girls kept the Army at bay

In the lottery of wartime requisitioning, the boys in khaki were a losing ticket.

For owners of grand country mansions who were kicked out of their own homes with just a few days' notice under sweeping emergency powers, the military were the last people they would want to see move in, with the Army being at the very bottom of the pile.

If they were lucky, they would eventually get the property back with just a bit of wear and tear. If they were unlucky, the place would be turned upside down and if they were truly unlucky, as a few were, they would never be able to return to their former home.

However, Aldenham Park near Bridgnorth hit the jackpot. It didn't have military guests at all - it became the wartime home for over 50 girls from a London convent school.

And its story is told in a new book by author Julie Summers called Our Uninvited Guests, The Secret Lives of Britain's Country Houses 1939-45 (Simon & Schuster, £20). It looks at what happened at just a few of Britain's greatest country houses which were taken over by people who would never have otherwise stepped inside their walls.

Nationwide thousands of properties, from castles, grand houses and hotels, to more ordinary four-bedroomed homes, were grabbed by the authorities for use by the military, but also for secret services, government offices, and vulnerable children, the sick and elderly.

"A number decided to offer their homes rather than wait for requisitioning, as it often meant they could influence to some extent who could occupy them," says Julie.

"Owners of properties that were forcefully requisitioned had no say in how they were used."

Aldenham Park was the home of the Acton family, who were prominent Catholics, and the peaceful atmosphere was interrupted at the beginning of the war by the arrival of sisters and pupils of the Convent of the Religious of the Assumption.

"Based in Kensington Square, the convent ran the first Montessori school in Britain. It had catered for girls up to the age of 13, but in the war older girls were educated until they were ready to take their higher certificates."

In 1939 the building in Kensington Square was needed by the ARP (Air Raid Precautions) so the sisters had to find a new home for the school and the teaching nuns.

"Various offers of help came, including from Lord Acton, who had served at the altar at the convent's church at Kensington, while two of his sisters had briefly attended the school as teenagers," says Julie.

"Lord Acton invited the school to Aldenham partly in an effort to ensure there would be an income for the estate while he was with his regiment, but also to see that Aldenham would not be requisitioned by the military."

The vanguard from the school, of 10 choir sisters and five lay sisters, arrived on September 1, 1939, with the children soon to follow.

Their arrival was a shock to Ronald Knox, a brilliant Catholic scholar and theologian of his time, who had been invited to stay in the peace and quiet of Aldenham Park by Daphne Acton - he had helped her in her conversion to Catholicism - so that he could work on his big project to translate the Old and New Testaments from the original Latin Vulgate.

He found himself reluctantly thrust into the role of the school's chaplain.

Julie says: "Within days of arriving at Aldenham the nuns became convinced the house was haunted. There were several ghostly happenings which frightened them and the girls alike."

Despite the valuable addition of fruit and vegetables from the garden, the food was described as revolting.

"After the food, what the girls remembered most was the cold. The main problem with the house was that it had not been designed for so many inhabitants."

The school uniform was a navy blue dress with a white removable collar, and conditions in their new home were tough, with a leaking roof and no heating. Washing was done on site and according to one pupil they were only allowed to change their underwear once a week and washing was equally infrequent, with the upshot that two girls sent their washing home and it came back in biscuit tins, sometimes with a cake.

Julie says the school complement was 54 teenage girls, 15 nuns, and a nursing mother.

She says for six years the school thrived at Aldenham Park, and on the whole the girls loved life there.

The school moved out after the end of the war in Europe. It did not go back to Kensington Square, as the buildings had been designated to be a new teacher training college, but went instead to another house, Exton Hall in Rutland.