GC4NTAY Bournemouth History: Great Train Robbery (Traditional Cache) in Southern England, United Kingdom created by Lost2011

This cache has been archived.

Lost2011: This one is not worth replacing again as it will clearly keep getting muggled. With no other suitable location nearby I will archive it, meaning one less to find in the series. Thanks for all the positive comments. :)

GC4NTAY ▼

A cache by Lost2011 Message this owner

Hidden : 1/27/2014

Difficulty:

Terrain:

Size: Size: micro (micro)

Join now to view geocache location details. It's free!

Watch

How Geocaching Works

Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions in our disclaimer.

Geocache Description:

This is my town. I live here. I love it.

This series of 10 stand alone caches, with a bonus at the end, will take you on a journey through Bournemouth, visiting a mix of urban and residential areas, and hopefully learning a little bit of history along the way. For the most part I have tried to make the caches accessible to all.

Following the support and kind comments I received from the "Bournemouth's Past" series, I posted on a social media site for thoughts and suggestions for another series about the town I love. I already had a few ideas left over after the first series, and I was certain my geocaching friends could help me with enough material to make another series, which they did in abundance! I couldn’t choose them all, and some locations weren’t suitable, but I hope you like the choices I have made. Many thanks my friends!

You can find the original "Bournemouth’s Past" series at the following link, which will take you to the most popular cache of the series, Jon Egging, and you will be able to find the other caches in the series from there.

In this "Bournemouth History" series, each cache has a number needed to locate the bonus cache, so you may wish to make notes as you go along.

Due to the urban nature of this series and the high probability of muggles, I have tried to make all the caches easy to find by providing detail in the hints, so please use the spoiler.

It was initially known as the Cheddington Mail Van Raid – but before long, it had acquired the more dramatic title of the Great Train Robbery.

In the early hours of August 8 1963, 15 men held up a mail train carrying a large quantity of cash between Glasgow and London. They got away with £2.6million in used notes.

The hunt for the gang transfixed the nation. And the first arrests were made days later in Bournemouth.

A young Detective Constable, Charlie Case, was one of the arresting officers, and still lives in Winton.

Sixteen men are believed to have been involved in the plot to stop the mail train. Roger Cordrey, one of the pair arrested in Bournemouth, was a former railwayman who put a cover over a green signal light. The gang wired a battery to the red signal to bring the train to a halt.

Driver Jack Mills was beaten with an iron bar and forced to take the train 600 yards further along the track so the thieves could unload their haul. They drove 28 miles to Leatherslade Farm to divide the money.

Police found the deserted Leatherslade Farm hideout on August 13. The breakthrough in Bournemouth came the next day.

Mr Case told the local Bournemouth newspaper that he remembers being at the station with a colleague, DC Peter Stutchbury. “CID in those days dealt with all crime. That included stolen bikes, which DC Stutchbury was dealing with, and panties stolen off the line,” he remembers.

He took the call to go out with Detective Sgt Stan Davies to see Ethel Clarke, a policeman’s widow in Tweedale Road, off Castle Lane West, which is the location of this cache. “She had put an advert in a shop window in Moordown advertising her garage for rent. These two chaps turned up and left a deposit in 10 shilling notes for six weeks,” Mr Case recalls.

“Because of her comments and suspicions, we turned up at Tweedale Road. We had a cup of tea with Mrs Clarke and while we were inside, she said ‘Oh, they’re coming back’.”

The officers asked to look inside the Austin van. “They objected to this and, in police words, a struggle ensued,” he says. “That involved tussling with them and bringing down a lot of trellis. They were shouting that they were being attacked.

“Joe Public stood around gawping. Not many people had a telephone at home then. Eventually, the uniform lads turned up. “They were detained and in the back of the vehicle were suitcases and hold-alls stuffed with bank notes, including lots of 10-bob ones.”

The two men turned out to be Roger Cordrey and William Boal, who had been living for several days in a flat above a florists in Moordown. They were taken to Bournemouth police station, where DCS Fewtrell and his colleagues from Buckinghamshire soon arrived.

Most of the train robbers were caught over the coming weeks and in 1964, 11 defendants were sentenced – the heaviest sentences being 30 years.

Cordrey, who was the only robber to plead guilty and give back his share of the money, was jailed for 20 years. Boal was jailed for 24. Their terms were reduced to 14 years each on appeal. Boal maintained his innocence and the crime’s mastermind Bruce Reynolds said he had not heard of him. Boal died in prison in 1970 and his family have recently been campaigning to clear his name. Cordrey was released in 1971 and went back into floristry in the West Country. Bruce Reynolds fled to Mexico but was arrested in 1968 in Torquay and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Ronnie Biggs, though far from the most important robber, became the most famous, largely for escaping prison and fleeing to Brazil. He returned to London in 2001 and was sent back to prison, from which he was released due to ill-health in 2009. Both Bruce Reynolds and Ronnie Biggs died in 2013.

As for Mrs Clarke of Tweedale Road: “Ethel Clarke had all sorts of threatening letters and phone calls,” says Mr Case. “She in turn paid for a holiday for Jack Mills to the Channel Islands – she had picked up £15,000 in reward money.”

Source

FTF: None at present.

Bournemouth History series:

GC41YWV: Pier Bandstand (M)
GC4NTAN: Tucktonia (N)
GC4NTAP: The Shell House (P)
GC4NTAQ: Moordown Halifax Memorial (Q)
GC4NTAR: Racecourse (R)
GC4NTAT: Moordown Tram Depot (T)
GC4NTAV: Waterfront (V)
GC4NTAW: Winter Gardens (W)
GC4NTAX: Typhoid Epidemic (X)
GC4NTAY: Great Train Robbery (Y)
GC4NTAZ: A338 Wessex Way [BONUS] - N50 MN.PQR W001. TV.WXY