Revelation

Here's the view north from the top of Reigate Priory Park - just where Winston Churchill would have sat in contemplation a century before.

You can almost see it all mapped out! Over to the east -

Little Gatton where Eisenhower was stationed,

the Reigate Hill chalk quarry and lime kilns where the secret bunker would go plus anti-aircraft guns,

Underbeeches where Monty was stationed,

the area for Monty's pigeon loft,

Beeches Wood with tree cover for the motorbike dispatch riders to camp,

and Broadleas where Churchill stayed occasionally to write his speeches.

Then there's Colley Pit which was still being mined throughout the war until the 1960s.

No wonder he stopped writing about Reigate in his diaries -his plans for the town were all TOO SECRET.

What you can't see are the sandstone caves - right in the middle of town. Very handy for wartime.

No secret now - 'Monty's hideout'

Here's a magnificent view south from the top of the chalk downs of Reigate Hill, taken in 1927 by famous Reigate photographer Francis Frith. By 1941 there was a massive secret underground bunker right below this very spot - 350 ft. long, and it is still there to this day, not on the Ordnance Survey maps!



Reproduced courtesy of Francis Frith.

Here is the view west, from the direction of his home a few yards away. It was a very industrious chalk quarry and lime kiln business up above a few very high class Victorian homes and estates.
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Reproduced courtesy of Francis Frith.

Since the turn of the century, Winston Churchill was a frequent visitor along the main road south from London towards Reigate Priory on business and for weekend house parties. Was he on the look-out for a perfect secret WW2 Battle HQ location? Yes of course. The chalk quarry abandoned for safety reasons would provide a top-secret Battle HQ/control centre (with expert mining into chalk, of all things!). The very top of that cliff is a magnificent vantage point south - throughout the war and for evermore.

Montgomery was a national celebrity after the North Africa success. He was given the South Eastern Command here in Reigate (plus Battle HQ now installed) to plan something very special indeed to win the war. And yet, with his health-conscious insistence on 5-mile cross country runs every week, he was very soon familiar with the quiet country lanes all around.

The HQ was closely guarded round the clock. 3 small cottages beside the main road on Reigate Hill were secretly fortified with gun holes and interior sandbags to window level for defence against the German invasion plans! The large houses were commandeered for accommodation and offices.

Dynamite

The Borough of Reigate had a very explosive moment when it was only 4 years old - July 14th 1867.

Alfred Nobel chose a stone quarry in Merstham, Redhill to demonstrate his new discovery of dynamite - what an improvement over the only existing methods, incendiary gunpowder or unstable explosive nitro-glycerine, by adding a packing substance to the nitro such as diatomacious earth, Fullers Earth or even sawdust. This proved to be much safer than nitro-glycerine and it earned him a fortune, leading to his even more famous, lasting legacy of Nobel prizes for good works.

He would probably be turning in his grave if he knew about the scandal of alleged bribery and corruption with the 2008 Nobel awards for medicine. Did a multi-national pharmaceutical company exert undue influence on the judges and so call the panel's integrity into question? Oh well, we shall see what happens. It rather casts an ominously dark shadow over the worldwide HPV vaccine campaign.

Meanwhile it is lovely to know that our local Fuller's Earth, quarried just a couple of miles further south in the Lower Greensand Ridge, is such a useful commodity. There are very few places in the UK where it could be extracted. This very fine type of earth is excellent for removing oils and grease, and decontaminating all sorts of things.

Fuller's Earth is sold in supermarkets as cat litter and face masks, but there's lots more: in the woollen industry, the chemicals industry, engineering, decontaminating army clothing from chemical poisoning, powdering babies' bottoms - and so the list goes on. Fuller's Earth is multi-purpose, and best of all, natural.

I gather that if you use dynamite in a Fuller's Earth quarry you make a terrific plume up in the air with the explosion.

What a great day out it must have been for Alfred Nobel and his newly patented dynamite.