IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Grendon Underwood, AYLESBURY, HP18 0TH

This country house was built in 1880 in the Jacobean style by Revd Randolph Piggott, Rector and Squire of Grendon Underwood, for his brother. The brother never lived there, so it was used as a rectory. When World War Two began in 1939, the Government bought the house for use by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) (which became independent of MI6 in 1942) as one of four home based receiving stations for messages from overseas agents. Known as Station 53a, the wireless station had Nissen huts in its grounds and was home to 400 signallers and coders, mostly women belonging to FANY, the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. Later the hall and its grounds were used as a fire training centre. In 1953 the property was converted into a prison and named Springhill Prison, and the building is now used for education and administration. The Transport Archive has a photograph of servants outside the hall http://www.transportarchive.org.uk/getobject.php?rnum=L2533&searchitem=Grendon&mtv=L3&pnum=1. This hall should not be confused with the Grendon Hall between Northampton and Wellingborough, which is an outdoor activity centre.

This notice fixed to the fence adjoining a field of sheep on the slopes of Spring Hill, Image, warns of enzootic abortion which is a disease of sheep caused by an organism called Chlamydophila abortus, and which can cause abortion and the birth of weak and sickly lambs that may die soon afterwards. The organism can be carried on boots and clothing and can affect humans, hence the warning 'pregnant women who come in contact with infected ewes during lambing time of severe illness or miscarriage'. The number of reports however of these infections and human miscarriages resulting from contact with sheep are extremely small, but farmers have a responsibility to minimise the risks to pregnant women.

These sheep in a field alongside the car park of HM Prison Springhill and on the slopes of Spring Hill, may be Herdwick sheep which originated in the fells of the Lake District and are widely thought to be the hardiest British breed. The lambs are born almost black turning lighter as they grow older, so each year's fleece is paler than the year before.

Looking south from the car park of HM Prison Springhill, this fine solitary horse chestnut tree is in a field in which sheep are grazing, though none are in view. Mill Hill is in the distance beyond the tree.