Watnall Hall - the Norway connection

In July 1889, Captain Lancelot Rolleston of Watnall Hall and his wife Lady Maud set off on an adventurous trip to Norway. 

Capt. Rolleston

For Rolleston the purpose of the trip was to hunt (mostly deer and reindeer) and fish (salmon and trout). His friend and mentor John Chaworth Musters of neighbouring Annesley Hall in Nottinghamshire had a fishing and hunting lodge in Laerdal, central Norway and knew the country well. The salmon fishing in particular was very well regarded by the visiting English aristocracy who were known in Norway as the Salmon lords. Perhaps this is where the idea for the Rolleston’s trip came from although they did not visit the Chaworth Musters's particular lodge. 

John's son and heir Patrick was born in Norway and raised his family there before inheriting Annesley and his grandson James lived at the family lodge at Vaulen in Surnadal. In WW2 James helped organise the Norwegian resistance and the "Shetland Bus". This was a series of Norwegian fishing boats used to smuggle Norwegian resistance fighters to Scotland for training and back again for guerrilla operations against the Nazis. James's Norwegian upbringing and fluency in the language were vital for this role. The Norwegians made a great impact with the Scots while training in the Cairngorm Mountains near Aviemore. The locals erected a memorial at Glenmore to the brave Norwegians who had lived amongst them and who died fighting the Germans.

James Chaworth Musters (in hat) and Norwegian resistance fighters
and his less than flattering statue at Vaulen below

 

The "Salmon Lords" - Rolleston and Chaworth Musters were among the
many Englishmen who frequented the Norwegian rivers and 
brought valuable business to the Norwegians.

Joan Wyndham, a WAAF girl who was billeted at Watnall Hall and worked in the village's underground bunkers had encountered the Norwegian sailors before when posted in Inverness. She says of them... "Some of them have curious names like characters in a Norse Saga: Fir-tree-eater, Tie-eater, Chamber-pot-breaker and so on. On moonlit nights they sneak out from the Shetlands to the occupied Norwegian coast and lie in wait among the islands for the German ships to come past. Their boats have two torpedoes and a speed of thirty knots -tiny and frail, but they can out-manoeuvre bigger ships."

Read more about the Rolleston's trip at the main Tales From Watnall Hall website here... https://watnallhall.blogspot.com/2023/03/captain-rollestons-norway-diary-july.html

and more about the Annesley Hall Chaworth Musters family's Norwegian connections during WW2 here... https://watnallhall.blogspot.com/2021/11/great-war-fallen-sons-of-annesley-hall.html

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Sources:

Section D for Destruction Forerunner of SOE Appendix 2: Officers, Agents and Contacts of Section D of the Secret Intelligence Service by Malcolm Atkin, which contains Jim CW's bio...

https://www.academia.edu/35641341/Section_D_for_Destruction_Forerunner_of_SOE_Appendix_2_Officers_Agents_and_Contacts_of_Section_D_of_the_Secret_Intelligence_Service

James L. ‘Jim’ Chaworth-Musters (1901 - 1948) D/G ‘Mouse’ 
Born at Annesley, Nottinghamshire, the son of a wealthy landowning family. He was educated at Rugby School and Caius College, Cambridge, where he studied geography. Chaworth Musters took part in a naturalist expedition to the Norwegian Jan Mayen island in 1920, which led to a life-long specialism in the flora of the island, but during the 1920s and 1930s he was also involved in other wildlife expeditions to Russia, Greece, Arabia and in 1939 to Afghanistan. In the latter he discovered a new species of mouse [more likely a salamander "Paradactylodon mustersi"] – which became his SIS code name. He owned a farm outside Bergen where he was a neighbour of Martin Linge, who became a liaison officer to Section D and later founded the famous Norwegian commando unit [Kompani Linge]. Chaworth Musters may have done some work for SIS before joining Section D in late 1939 and becoming head of a Norwegian network in the Bergen area. His cover was as vice-consul in Bergen, with a commission as a Temporary Lieutenant in the RNVR. When the Nazis arrived in Bergen he escaped to hide in the hills with a price on his head. He was evacuated to Britain from Bryggia, Nordfjord on 10 May 1940 and then helped recruit Norwegians for the Section D Norwegian expeditions. He continued his work with SOE and helped Martin Linge form the Kompani Linge, interrogating potential recruits who had escaped from Norway. In September 1943 he rejoined SIS. In 1946 Chaworth-Musters became Assistant Keeper of Zoology at the Natural History Museum in London but died just two years later