How county’s elite showed they had real tunnel vision (From Worcester News)

How county’s elite showed they had real tunnel vision

8:55am Tuesday 31st January 2012 in Mike Pryce By Mike Pryce

IN days of old when knights were bold and enemies came on horse or foot, our forefathers were a crafty lot.

Especially if they came from the section of society which had the money – and therefore the wherewithal – to take precautions.

Stories abound of secret tunnels beneath Worcester, where people could flee in times of danger or hide until the peril had passed and most large country houses around the city were supplied with an escape route if things got hot.

Sometimes, these have only been discovered centuries later and often by accident.

Which leads us nicely to Cotheridge Court, a period pile about four miles west of Worcester.

This was converted to apartments in the 1950s but for nearly 350 years before that had been the seat of a branch of the Berkeley family, more readily associated now with Spetchley Court to the east of Worcester and Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire.

In the decade following the Second World War, many country mansions such as Cotheridge Court became a millstone around their owners’ necks. With rising taxes and diminishing family income, they were impossible to maintain and were sold off.

Breaking the news of his decision to sell up in September 1949, the court’s owner Mr R B Berkeley told a Berrow’s Worcester Journal reporter: “It’s the same old reason.

It’s either that or the workhouse.

The house is very old and like so many others, we just cannot keep it up, what with taxes and death duties and the war bringing on one thing and another. In fact, to put it bluntly, it’s a case of, ‘You’ve had it, chum’.”

So Mr Berkeley left Cotheridge and went to live on the Isle of Wight.

When the auctioneer’s hammer came down on the court, the buyer turned out to be an entrepreneur from Ireland called Charles Lewsey, who at that time also owned Bevere Manor, another country house to the north of Worcester.

Lewsey immediately set about cashing in on his latest investment.

He decided to turn the grand old building, which dated back to at least the 16th century and probably earlier, into apartments.

He also sold off timber from the surrounding parkland, together with oak beams from the court’s interior.

This brought father and son Big Jack and Little Jack Tolley up the court’s front drive in their timber lorry. Today, “Little” Jack Tolley is 74 years old and lives in the Barbourne area of Worcester.

It was a letter he wrote to the Worcester News last year that lifted the lid on a hidden part of Cotheridge Court’s past.

“In the years after the Second World War we lived in Fernhill Heath,” he said. “My father was actually an engineer, but he also felled trees and used to drive around the area selling timber off the back of his lorry.

“It could carry a fair weight because it was a former delivery lorry from Lewis Clark’s brewery in Angel Place and had been converted off an old Dennis fire engine chassis.

“Nearly everyone had an open fire then and I used to go along to help him. We were both Jack Tolley, so we were known as Big Jack and Little Jack. In 1951 when I was 14, my father purchased a number of dead trees in the grounds of Cotheridge Court for firewood, together with lots of the oak timber framing from the inside of the building.

“When the contractors were excavating to provide a large cesspit to serve the new development, they reached a depth of about eight feet and came upon a layer of heavy oak beams. When the beams were removed it transpired they covered a junction in a tunnel network with three branches running from it. One tunnel ran in the direction of Cotheridge Church, one in the direction of the river Teme and the third ran to the base of a substantial chimney at the back of the court.

“At the time I was looking for bird nests in the roof of the old court and there was a section of ceiling that had fallen down, so I crawled up into it. In among the dust and old bricks and timber there was a priest’s hole where the priests hid from Cromwell’s troops.

“Furthermore, the tiny attic room had been papered with what would appear to be pages of newspaper written in possibly Latin. Certainly it was a foreign language.

“This hide-out was accessed from the chimney via the tunnels connected to the church and presumably the third tunnel was a means of escape towards the river if the need arose.

“The tunnels themselves were of arched brick construction about three feet high. The tunnel going towards the river was exposed when a pool was being created in the court grounds and the excavation uncovered the brickwork.”

Jack is adamant the tunnels were for human use and not drainage culverts, not only because of their construction but also because of the direction they ran and the levels they ran at, sometimes on an incline.

In fact, Cotheridge Court was the scene of subtle subterfuge during the English Civil War. Its owner Sir Rowland Berkeley, a supporter of the King, was among many Cavaliers who obtained written passes of safety in 1646 after taking an oath not to bear arms against Parliament.

Despite this, he then fought on Charles II’s side at the Battle of Worcester five years later. With the Royalists facing defeat, Sir Rowland, who was riding a distinctive piebald horse, left the field of battle and made his way home.

Fortunately for him, he owned two horses of a very similar colour and so took his war horse to a tenant’s stable and left it there.

When Roundhead troops eventually arrived at Cotheridge Court looking for him, Sir Rowland was able to protest his innocence and show them the second piebald horse resting peacefully and obviously not having taken part in any battle. Case dismissed m’lud.

Which was just as well, because a warhorse and a Cavalier commander would have been a rather tight fit down a three foot high escape tunnel.