I n the summer of 1947, it would have taken Gwen Chandler just 15 minutes to cycle home from the textile factory in Bletchley where she worked as a machinist. Her route went east out of town, straight past the county cinema and up the hill into the Buckinghamshire village of Little Brickhill, where she lived at 9 Watling Street with her mum, Lottie, her aunt, uncle and grandparents. It’s easy to imagine Gwen pausing in the heart of the village and glancing apprehensively to her right down the tree-lined drive to the large manor house there.
Requisitioned during the second world war, it was home to 105 German prisoners. Held captive since Hitler’s defeat, these men – along with hundreds of thousands of their compatriots scattered across Britain in dozens of prison camps – were put to work in the fields, brick factories, construction sites and gasworks. Gwen, who had just turned 21, harboured a dangerous secret.
At some point during that summer, she had started a clandestine relationship with one of the PoWs at the manor house – a relationship that, if discovered, would have brought scandal on her family. In the first months after the war, German prisoners were largely kept apart from the British public while they helped rebuild the nation. But, slowly, the regulations banning social interaction were relaxed and by Christmas 1946 the PoWs were allowed to go for “walk-outs” within a five-mile radius.
This taste of freedom came with strict rules, including this writ.