A LOCAL author's drama about the Gunpowder Plot is hitting the airwaves of national radio.

Women's Hour on Radio 4 is dramatising the roles of the women caught up by accident or design in the Gunpowder Plot. The idea for the serial was put to the BBC by Kate Shaw of Kidderminster Road, Bromsgrove.

Tales will be aired from next Monday (October 31) through to Friday (November 4).

Kate has written the episode being broadcast on Wednesday (November 2) and features Lady Habington of Hindlip Hall, near Droitwich. The hall is now demolished and is the site of West Mercia Constabulary headquarters.

Kate said: "I became interested in the Gunpowder Plot when I visited Himbleton and Huddington Court.

"I didn't realise how much the Midlands, and this local area, was connected with the plot and I was fascinated by it."

She approached Radio 4 with the idea for the play. Four other Midland women writers will also have their plays featured during the week.

Kate will also be talking live about the serial on Women's Hour this Friday.

She said: "I am really excited about going down to London for the radio show and am now thinking up answers to all the questions they could ask me.

"It was brilliant to go to the recording of my play and watch the actors speaking the words I had written. It was great to see it come to life and hear the characters, they were just as I had imagined them."

The gunpowder plotters were mostly from or related to Midlands families from places such as Coughton Court and Hagley Hall. Their escape from London took them through Bromsgrove and Drotwich. After a desperate horseback ride from London they assembled at Huddington Court, near Droitwich, called at Hewell Grange for gunpowder, and were finally surrounded and killed or captured near Kingswinford.