Russian Spy in Nethercote?!

It is said that a piece of treachery that changed world history took place in a quiet lane in Nethercote

Laus Fuchs is said to have handed over the secret formula of the atom bomb to a Russian spy named Anna, claimed to have taken place in 1945 on a bench in Nethercote.

Often referred to as the most important “atomic” spy of the 20th century, Klaus Fuchs (1911–1988) was a German physicist who worked on the British and US-led atomic projects of the Cold War era. In 1950, Fuchs was caught passing vital secrets to the Soviet Union and sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment!

COLD WAR IN A COUNTRY PARISH The seemingly insignificant hamlet of Nethercote does have one claim to international fame. It was here, conveniently mid-way between Oxford and Birmingham, yet safely off the beaten track, that a communist spy ring would exchange secrets to send to the USSR. Ruth Werner was born into a Jewish, middle-class, academic family in Berlin in 1907. She was the daughter of the prominent economist, Dr. René Kuczynski and at that time she was called Ursula. Having lived through the humiliation and defeat of the First World War, Ursula, like many other young idealists, held Nationalism and Capitalism responsible for Germany’s chaotic unemployment and inflation. She joined the Communist Youth League of Germany in 1924, and was soon a full member of the Communist Party. In the 1930s she was working as a Soviet 57 agent in war-torn China with Richard Sorge and Rolf Hamburger. With her British Communist husband, Ursula arrived in Britain in 1940 where she lived in Oxford as Ursula Brewer, a Jewish refugee. Her brother, Dr. Jürgen Kuczynski had already been spying here for some time, and had introduced Dr. Klaus Fuchs to Soviet Intelligence. Fuchs was developing the early stages of the atomic bomb at Birmingham University, and he would meet Ursula at The Red House in Nethercote, an easy walk from Banbury Station in Grimsbury for each of them. Fuchs apparently believed that both sides in what was later to become the Cold War should have Atomic technology in order that a fair balance of knowledge would promote Peace. In her autobiography published in 1977, Ruth always justified her work as being against Nazi-fascism. Throughout 1942 they would meet and she would send details by wireless. She returned to Germany in 1950, where she lived in East Berlin as Ruth Werner, and died in 2000. The Red House (was it chosen on purpose as a Communist joke?) is now called The White Cottage. Local word of mouth tells us that Ursula and Klaus would sit on a green council bench, just along from The Red House, outside The Willows. The bench was situated on a rather bad bend in the road and was always being crashed into by cars, so in time the council took it down and Kenneth Carrdus bought it and it stood in the garden of Overthorpe Hall for many years”

Extract from “The Ancient and Noble Seat” by Shona Rutherford-Edge