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19 May 2006
9 June 2006
27th September 2006

Brocket Hall Hertfordshire

View from Inverie House

The Old Forge Pub
© Gerry McCann

Spanish John II

19th December 2006

Happy Christmas from a Christmas baby!
Christmas Day IS my birthday.

I was born at the home of Lord Brocket, Brocket Hall, when the house was used as a Maternity Hospital. It was requisitioned during the war and remained as such until 1948. It’s a magnificent building situated just outside Welwyn Hertfordshire and now boasts a fine Golf Course and a superb restaurant. With regard to this wonderful building and its illustrious owners, a strange co-incidence occurred when I was on a visit to Knoydart , an almost desolate and wild penninsula in Scotland.

I have visited Knoydart many times since but on my first visit and asking about local sites and walks, I was told by a resident of an old Manor House deserted and unoccupied which was situated a few hundred yards from the main village. Although without human occupants, the building was still fully furnished, complete with carpets and cutlery.

This I had to see, and I made my way a short distance along the coast where Inverie House stood. No closed gate barred the entrance to its grounds and an ancient cannon was located by the front porch, the gun pointing towards Loch Nevis as if waiting to repel invaders from the sea.

The house  was of a style of the eighteenth century and at the centre of its front elevation, a large and heavy door was left slightly open. Pushing the door and entering the hall, I was amazed that what I was told by the villager seemed to be true. The place was fully carpeted, antique furniture was still in place and pictures adorned the walls. I moved around the house past couches and cupboards,  filled book cases and  domestic paraphernalia until I saw the grand piano, standing in great splendor with its top still propped open. The heavy curtains were a little worn in places but could still be drawn. Upstairs the beds were made and the bathrooms were as if the occupants had left just a few days ago. Why was this place deserted and abandoned? I left the way I came, but stopping again in the hall way noticed an engraving of a building I was familiar with.

Yes it was Brocket Hall Hertfordshire! I have an almost identical print on our sitting room wall at home!

Then there was another - a different aspect of the house and grounds, definitely Brocket Hall! Totally amazed, I needed to find out more. The hub of the community nowadays was the Pub, and the obvious place to find local information. So there I went. The ‘Old Forge' is set on the foreshore at Inverie and claims to be the most remote public house in Britain. It boasts local ales and serves magnificent game and locally caught fish.

The Knoydart Peninsula which stretches over 17,000 acres has around sixty permanent residents and boasts a junior school of seven pupils who at the age of eleven leave Knoydart for their secondary boarding education in Fort William. The residents are mostly employed with working at the Youth Hostel, The Old Forge Pub and Restaurant, or for The Forestry Commission plus a few remaining  hill farmers who run their black faced sheep on the hills. Those who aren’t local are seasonal visitors, who help the Knoydart economy with their tourist presence from walking in or by saiIing into the loch.

Virtually everybody and everything comes via ferry from Mallaig, a half hour trip from around the coast or by ‘Spanish John’ a small freight handling boat that plies the Western Isles and has a drop front like a landing craft which can deliver a vehicle sized load straight onto the beach.

On reaching the Old Forge, I asked the landlord Ian Robertson, a retired Major of the Black Watch about Inverie House and was told that it once belonged to a Lord Brocket! It was part of the Brocket Estate which Lord Brocket purchased in the early thirties. The conversation developed, but not a soul had a good word for Brocket or his wife. It transpired that Lord Brocket was a Nazi sympathiser, to the extent that he attended Hitlers 50th birthday party and that Nazis had visited Inverie House before the war and, some speculated, during.

After the second world war part of the Brocket land was occupied by seven ex servicemen from Knoydart who were led to believe that this land would be given to them on their return after their service. They duely marked out equal acreages and occupied the plots. This proved not to be the case, Lord Brocket evicted them all with the support and blessing of the new Labour post war government. A disaster!

All previous estate workers were sacked and new ones installed. The land was controlled by Bailiffs recruited by Lord and Lady Brocket. Hatred of the Brockets still lives on.

At this news I decided not to mention my connection with the family even though a mere coincidence, but continued to glean as much information as I could. Inverie House was abandoned several years ago and when I asked why nothing had been removed or stolen from the property the reply was ‘ How would you get it away without anyone knowing? Carrying a grand piano 20 miles across the hills in the dark was impossible and any boat movement by sea would be seen by all. - Silly question!

So the house has remained empty until recently, but on my last trip I heard that a buyer had been found. The house still looks unchanged from the exterior and it still remains a mystery to me of what will happen to it in the future. I wonder if the present Lord Brocket is the new owner.?...........

Merry Christmas
What do you think?
I’d like to hear from you.
Chris
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