Hidden London

SECRET SPOTS YOU SIMPLY HAVE TO DISCOVER

- BY DAVID ELLIS

War is a machine serviced by countless places, parts and people, and battlefields take many forms. The Allied victory in the Second World War was won on brown, muddied grass and in the opaque grey of cloud, in the ice-cold waters of the Atlantic and under the desert heat in El Alamein. But it was also won in British country houses, in rooms of studded leather chairs and silver cigarette cases, rooms which smelt of smoke and Scotch.

One of these was Latimer House, found where the Metropolitan line scuttles just beyond the M25. A mansion has stood there since 1194, becoming in the 17th century the family seat for the Cavendish clan. Charles I was taken here after his arrest for treason. William Cavendish, 3rd Earl Devonshire, entertained the king with his mother; a couple of years later, Charles was dead. The two aren't connected.

The Cavendishes' first home burned to the ground in the 1830s; its replacement still stands today, a red brick mansion, grand but Gothic, one of countless chimney stacks and stone-rimmed windows, designed by Edward Blore (who, at the same time, was also enlarging Buckingham Palace). He created a building of hidden tunnels and unexpected doorways. A century passed with little to report, until 1940, when a secret was whispered that would stay unknown for the next 60 years.