Remote Scottish lodge used to house foreign secret agents in WWII up for sale

Inverlair Lodge has six bedrooms and four reception rooms. (Galbraith via CNN Newsource)

A remote Scottish lodge used to keep foreign secret agents far away from trouble during the Second World War is now up for sale.

Nestled deep in the Scottish Highlands, Inverlair Lodge was requisitioned by the Special Operations Executive (SOE), an espionage and sabotage organization Britain created during World War II, before transforming back into a family home – now on the market for offers over £1.35 million (US$1.8 million).

Surrounded by countryside and 17 miles (27 kilometres) from the town of Fort William, it is far from prying eyes.

Known as “Number 6 Special Workshop School,” the lodge was used to house foreign agents who “had fallen by the wayside,” according to its former commander, Alfred Fyffe, who detailed his three-year tenure in interviews with London’s Imperial War Museum in 2002.

These were agents who had gone through initial training but, for whatever reason, could not be deployed, according to the 2008 book “British Intelligence: Secrets, Spies and Sources,” by historians Edward Hampshire, Stephen Twigge and Graham Macklin.

The agents were housed “under surveillance, not under guard,” Fyffe stressed, adding that they were sent there “to forget what they learned about our subversive business” because they had “certain information which, if they were released outside the services, could be dangerous to this country.”

Housing agents of different nationalities like this “under one roof” was an “experiment” said Fyffe.

He was charged with occupying their time and set aside one room – the larder – to use as a cell if there was any trouble. “If you have to use it, use it within reason,” his superiors told him.

Fyffe kept the agents busy by sending them to salvage metal scattered all over the countryside and getting them to mend boots.

Just three agents were there when he took over the lodge, one of them an Italian engineer who had been a lieutenant to the country’s fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, until they fell out and he fled to France, where he worked with the Communists.

Before Fyffe arrived, the first two people housed there tried to run away, though he said he “never had any trouble” – apart from a Dutchman who hit someone in the jaw and broke down the wall outside his office.

Rudolf Hess, a top Nazi who secretly flew to the U.K. in 1941 as a self-appointed negotiator, was briefly held at the lodge, too, while he was being interrogated by intelligence officers, real estate agent Galbraith said, though Fyffe does not mention this.

The SOE ceased to exist after World War II and Inverlair became derelict until it was renovated in the 1970s.

Few traces of the lodge’s history remain. Nowadays, it is a large, comfortable family home like many others in Scotland – many of its rooms have woodburning stoves, and its kitchen island is painted a jaunty yellow. There are four reception rooms, six bedrooms, outbuildings – including a separate two-bedroom cottage – and 30.88 acres of land.

The property listing can be viewed here.