Inverlair Lodge

Inverlair Lodge lies about one mile west of Tulloch station, and half a mile south of the A68.

Inverlair Lodge
© David Healey
www.theunmutual.co.uk

Dating from the late 18th century, the house was purchased by John Walker of Crawfordton in 1834, along with Corrour, when he bought part of the Loch Treig estates from the Duke of Gordon. It was extended in 1860 and in 1880 by his son, Colonel Sir George Gustavus Walker (1830 - 1897).

In 1941, the lodge was requisitioned and became one of the facilities operated by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II, and was known as No.6 Special Workshop School, part Inter Services Research Bureau (ISRB),

SOE (and SIS or MI6) planned many secret operations in enemy territory during World War II, and it was inevitable that there would be occasions where volunteers would refuse to take part once they became aware of the full details. Some were unable to kill when the occasion was reduced to a one-on-one scenario, as opposed the anonymity of a battlefield exchange. With information being released on a Need to Know basis, their training meant that they were in possession of highly classified and secret information relating to pending missions, and could not be allowed to return to public life, where a careless remark could have compromised their secrecy. Inverlair Lodge became a detention or internment camp where such individuals could be accommodated, safely isolated from public contact. Conditions there were described as luxurious, and the lodge was even said to provide a safe haven for former agents or spies, who could not risk being seen in public, for fear of being recognised and killed in retaliation for missions they had carried out.

It has also been suggested that the lodge was equipped with facilities, equipment and activities similar to those of a normal training camp, the aim being to accommodate those that were unable to complete training in the normal way. The aim being to fool them into believing they were still undergoing training, allowing them to be kept safely out of circulation until they, or conditions, were deemed safe for then to be released. The idea seems a little improbable, and wasteful of resources, if the deception was run with sufficient realism to fool the trainees, given it would seems reasonable to assume that they had already been screened and selected on the basis of their aptitude for espionage related activities.

A number of web sites have been noted to refer to Inverlair Lodge being used to hold Rudolf Hess, after his flight to Scotland on May 10, 1941. Notably, VisitScotland.com asserted: Inverlair, famous in the twentieth century as one of the places in Northern Scotland where Rudolf Hess, Deputy Leader of Nazi Germany, was held prisoner after his flight to Scotland in May 1941.

When considering the above tale, it's worth reviewing the published record of Hess's movements after his arrival:

May 10, 23:09, Hess bales out over Eaglesham
May 10/May 11, midnight, transfer to Gifnock Scout Hall, 3 Battalion Home Guard HQ
May 11/May 12, overnight at Maryhill Barracks
May 13, Buchanan Castle Military Hospital near Drymen
May 17 to May 20, the Queen's House at the Tower of London
May 20, transported to Camp Z (Mytchett Place, Aldershot) for 13 months
June 26, 1942,transported to POW Reception Station, Maindiff Court, Abergavenny, South Wales
October 8, 1945, flown to Nuremberg on for trial

The tale is, in all probability, genuine, but not in respect of Hess's actual movements. Consider the isolated location, its reputation, distance, and direction in relation to Hess's actual movements, and the story gains credibility as deliberate mis-information. This would have been leaked to known agents (or through German agents that had been turned), diverting enemy attention from the actual transport route, to a very plausible, but false, and time-consuming alternative.

SOE (Special Operations Executive) formed out of parts of SIS 1940, remnants merged with SIS 1946
The following excerpt is quoted from documentation that appears on many web sites. It has not been attributed in the normal way, as many of the appearances contain the same words, but claim different authors, so we have only given the source for this quote, and not the author:

This was the response made by Hugh Dalton, the Minister of EcW to Churchill's pressure for an immediate counter-offensive against the German occupation of Western Europe. SOE, effectively a temporary, wartime-only organization of doubtful value was run separately from SIS, though for much of the war relied heavily on the intelligence services communications network until the creation of STS-2 (Thame Park); STS53A (Grendon Underwood); STS53B (Poundon House); STS53C (Signal Hill-Poundon, later SIS/DWS closed 1990's); STS54 (Fawley Court, Henley) and STS53D (Belhaven House-Dunbar). Although it had limited successes in Norway (the destruction of Heavy Water facilities), Yugoslavia and the Far East (with TF-136 which was later almost completely absorbed into the post war SIS) in particular, disasters such as the German Operation North Pole penetration of the SOE Dutch section and the German reprisals in the wake of the Heydrich assassination were of greater significance. Indeed by 1944 its military value was strictly limited and it was largely sidelined for the rest of the warw. On 15th August 1945 SOE ceased to be separate organization from SIS and the run down process began and in July 1946 the SOE was finally disbanded with many of its best officers, agents, some whole sections and a number of operations being transferred to SIS. Far from SOE disappearing however its absorption into the intelligence service had a significant and largely positive impact on the future organization and leadership of SIS itself. Its first Headquarters was in the St Ermins Hotel, but moved to its permanent facilities at 64 Baker Street on 31st October 1940 with the cover name of Inter-Services Research Bureau (IRSB). Later added Norgeby House at no-83 and St Michael's House at no-82 Baker Street. Along with a myriad of Training Establishments (known as STS-1, 2 etc) SOE was also to create a 'Cooler' for failed agents who could not be posted elsewhere until sensitive operations they had been trained for had been completed. This was at Inverlair Lodge, in Inverness-shire and was heavily guarded by the Cameron Highlanders. Both SOE and SIS were to make considerable use of its secure facilities.

- Source (Various, origin not identified)

Prisoner inspiration

George Markstein, who worked with Patrick McGoohan on the 1960's TV series The Prisoner, has told of how he learnt about places such as Inverlair Lodge during the war, when he was a journalist, and there can be little doubt that the discovery influenced the design of the fictional Village in which the series was set. Commenting on the residents "They were largely people who had been compromised. They had reached the point in their career where they knew too much to be let loose, but they hadn't actually done anything wrong. They weren't in any way traitors, they hadn't betrayed anything, but in their own interest it was better if they were kept safely."

Markstein was also to base a book on this knowledge, The Cooler, written in 1974, and featuring the fictitious Inverloch.

In a later book, Ferret, he went as close as possible to revealing the American and Russian villages, which, together with Inverlair Lodge, would make up "at least three", referred to on occasions by McGoohan.

For sale

The lodge was placed on the market during 2008, expected to sell the for at least �1.1 million. The sales brochure was notable in that it repeated the "Hess Stayed Here" story.