This issue readers, we are leaving behind our lovely home town of Frome, pulling out our bus passes, boarding the D2, travelling all the way to Beckington and journeying back to 1949.
Beckington Abbey is a beautiful and historic mansion dating back to 1502 which in 1946 had new owners; Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Russell of the Royal Navy, his wife Noel and their daughter Miss Frances Prudence Russell aged 23.
The war had been over for months and the two women were settling into the ancient abbey and renovating its interior while Captain Russell was in London. To help with this they had the assistance of some inmates from the White House, Prisoner of War Camp which was the old Mendip Lodge Frome.
One of these young men was Klaus Barth a German parachutist whose job it was to whitewash the abbey ceilings. He and Frances were immediately attracted to each other and after she had spent some time admiring his work on the ceilings, they fell in love.
One day in January of 1947 Klaus failed to return to the camp and seemed to have disappeared. After a while the authorities gave up the search and there the matter rested until two years later when in January 1949 the newly-appointed housekeeper, Mrs. Isabelle Voyles, was asked to produce two breakfasts and deliver them to the quarters of Mr. and Mrs. Gold and their baby daughter.
The door was answered by a man calling himself ‘Nicolas Gold’ whom she recognised immediately as the missing prisoner of war Klaus Barth! He and Frances had married under his adopted name of Gold in July of 1947 at Lymington Parish Church and produced a daughter whom they named Noel after her grandmother.
After Voyles spilled the beans the abbey was raided and the family, including Captain Russell, appeared at Frome Magistrates court charged, That between January 1947 and January 1949 they did wilfully and knowingly harbour Klaus Barth whom they knew, or had reasonable grounds for believing, had acted in contravention of the Aliens Order (1920) by failing to register or furnish particulars of himself.
Frances appeared in the dock alongside her mother, father and husband with the baby on her knee and they were remanded on bail for a week but Herr Barth was kept in jail while the authorities considered further charges. As the car took the women away from the court the door burst open, throwing mother and baby into the road where they rolled over several times but both were happily unhurt.
Despite claiming rather lamely in their defence that they had had no idea that 28 year-old Barth was German; they had introduced him to friends and neighbours as an Irishman whose mother was a Danish princess, mother and daughter were convicted and fined £75 each. The Lieutenant Commander was acquitted as he had been away in London for much of the time and was able to claim that he had no idea what was going on.
In what seems like a remarkably generous gesture Barth was acquitted of all charges, although it did emerge that he was in danger of being deported to the Soviet-occupied East Germany, so perhaps the authorities took pity on him. Whatever their reasons, he was released to his wife and daughter and allowed to remain in the country.
Beckington Abbey was sold, the Gold/Barth family moved to Guildford and there our knowledge would have ended were it not for a misunderstanding over a book in WH Smith’s four years later. It seems that Frances who was now styling herself Baroness von Barth had mistakenly picked up a book with her handbag and left the shop without paying. She was kept in custody without her husband having been informed and had her title called into doubt, which outraged the magistrates so much that they dismissed the charges and ordered an enquiry into the behaviour of those prosecuting.
Baroness Barth died peacefully in her sleep at her home in Herefordshire in April 2008 leaving eight daughters and 14 grandchildren. The abbey is now converted into three dwellings.
Mick Davis David Lassman
