The House of Spies

They have to live somewhere!

26 Cromwell Road, Chesterfield. Image: Roland’s Travels

Here on this quiet residential street, Cromwell Road in Chesterfield, you will find a house with a blue plaque. I only discovered this story by chance. This house is not far from where my daughter and her family live. On a recent visit and looking out of an upstairs window I could see a house with a gabled front. I could only just see the upper section of the house, so I decided to look at Apple Maps and see where it was situated.

It turned out to be on Cromwell Road. A Google search revealed something interesting. Not about the house I could see, but the one in the photo above, number 26.

26 Cromwell Road, Chesterfield

The house looks late Victorian. It was lived in by George Maurice Wright whose son, Peter Maurice Wright was born here in 1916.

George, who it seems, liked to be called by his middle name, Maurice, was a director of research at the Marconi Company. He was also one of the founders of signals intelligence during WWI. He was an expert in military intelligence.

Like his father, Peter became a scientist. During WWll he worked at the Admiralty Research Laboratory. Following the war, in 1947, he went to work as a Royal Navy scientist attached to the Marconi Company where he had the opportunity to work alongside his father. They worked on radar and anti-submarine warfare.

Moving on a couple of years, in 1949, he started working part-time for the British Intelligence Service MI5. The Secret Service consulted him on the matter of Russian bugging of the United Kingdom and US Embassies in the former USSR.

A bug had been detected in the US Embassy. It was a wooden carving which had been hanging over the ambassador's desk since 1945. This must have produced valuable intelligence for the Russians.

As the device had no wires connected and did not need batteries, it was nicknamed The Thing. Peter Wright solved the conundrum. The American scientists had no idea how it worked. They turned to the UK for help and Wright was the right man for the job. (Dad joke alert!)

It turned out, that The Thing was operated from outside of the building by powerful electromagnetic waves. The Russian intelligence could then listen to what was being spoken in the US Ambassador’s Office. Wright, obviously, a very clever man, went on to produce an equivalent spying device called SATYR.

With the reputation he gained he was appointed in 1954 to Principle Science Officer at MI5. He was now a full-time member of the secret service. He progressed in various roles until his retirement.

This is the house where I could just see the triangular gable and cross timbers from my daughter’s home. Image: Roland’s Travels

How Did Peter Wright Become Well-Known?

Intelligence officers, often referred to as spies, are people who live in the shadows. Unless they are caught out by the enemy they remain anonymous and what they know tends to go to the grave with them. It’s like the old joke, “If I tell you, I will have to kill you”.

Peter Wright retired in January 1976. He was disillusioned with what he believed was the infiltration of Russian spies into the British intelligence services and the UK Government’s lethargy about it.

He came to public attention in 1985 when he wrote a book with the catchy title Spycatcher. Before it was published, the British Government sought to ban the book. The book was finally published in 1987 in the US and then followed by Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Europe (excluding the UK). Over two million copies were sold.

The ban in Britain was lifted in 1988 but Wright is forbidden to receive any royalties from British sales. In 1991 the European Court of Justice ruled that the British Government had breached human rights by gagging the UK press from 1986 onwards.

Peter Wright died on 27th April 1995 in Tasmania, where he had been living and where he wrote the book. He had a year before been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

It’s quite a story and this is only a summary. Perhaps you have read Spycatcher. Let me know in the comments below.

They say every house has a story to tell, and 26 Cromwell Road certainly has an interesting one. I hope you have found it so. If you’re not already please become a subscriber.