The shelter when first discovered in Lindsay Allason-Jones’ Berwick garden
When retired archaeologist Lindsay Allason-Jones moved into the house she had bought, she was to find that it came with an intriguing extra.
Buried in the garden in Castle Terrace in Berwick was what appeared to be a Second World War Anderson air raid shelter.
Three million of these shelters, made from galvanised bolted-together metal sheets, were installed in backyards and gardens.
In true archaeological tradition, digging began around Lindsay’s shelter.
What sparked her interest was that the structure was built to much stronger specifications than an Anderson version, using more concrete and bricks than the average civilian would have been able to access in wartime.
The discovery of a maker’s metal plate confirmed that it was not an Anderson, but an expensive Wilmot Fortress shelter.
That was the signal for a research project by Lindsay, which began by establishing the identity of the occupant of the house when the shelter was built.
It was Captain Gibson Ferrier Steven, who was well known in Berwick as a wireless whizz.
“There was a hint that a member of the Steven family had played an unusual part in the defence of Britain,” says Lindsay, a past president of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne and current president of the Border Archaeological Society, which meets in Berwick.
Gibson Ferrer Steven with his radio tent at Scout camp in Northumberland
Research revealed Gibson’s role in eavesdropping in the equipped shelter on German wireless traffic, including that of warships and submarines in the North Sea.
All information was fed to the codebreakers at Bletchley Park, which played a crucial war-shortening function in deciphering enemy communications traffic.
The search also put Lindsay in touch with Gibson’s grandson – the Berwick-born England international footballer Trevor Steven – who knew little of this secret part of family history.
Now Lindsay and co-author Phil Rowett, a retired history teacher, have told what she describes as an “extraordinary story” in their new book titled The Spy in a Berwick Garden.
It propelled Newcastle University Roman expert and author Lindsay into a new and recent time zone.
The shelter when excavated
Gibson Steven had run a wireless business in Newcastle in the 1920s and had been recruited in 1938 into the Secret Intelligence Service’s Radio Security Section, which was run by MI6 from 1941.
As one of a network of Voluntary Interceptors, Gibson came under the Official Secrets Act and was instructed not to say anything to anyone about his war work.
The VI network played a major part in the war. It discovered and monitored the networks run by German military intelligence, and one of their contributions helped lead to the sinking of the battleship Bismarck and the pocket battleship Scharnhorst.
The Steven family, who owned newspapers in Berwick, would have known the historian and Oxford history professor Hugh Trevor-Roper, who was born in Glanton in Northumberland and served as an officer in the Radio Security Service.
His doctor father was the private physician of the Duke of Northumberland when he was in residence in Alnwick Castle.
Wireless had been a hobby of Gibson’s since the age of 12, and a newspaper article described how he had built his own apparatus.
Gibson Ferrier Steven as a young man
He was visited and reprimanded by Post Office officials because his signals were being picked up by British warships off the coast.
In the First World War, Gibson served as a wireless officer when the technology made a vital communications contribution to battles in which he was involved. He was promoted and mentioned in despatches for his efforts.
After the war, he joined the Chase Motor Company, which had a base in Claremont Buildings in Newcastle. He was advertising the Scott Sociable, originally designed as a machine gun carrier, then converted into a three-wheel vehicle.
In 1922 Chase opened a wireless department, which Gibson, who lived in Jesmond, headed, and by 1924 it was known as Steven and Co, producers of radios and radio parts.
He later returned to Berwick to work in the family newspaper business.
Gibson died in 1953, having apparently told nobody about his war work. “He was an extraordinary man in many ways,” says Lindsay. “As the work he was engaged in was secret, many people might have thought he was not pulling his weight in the war effort.”
Gibson Ferrier Steven’s grandson, England footballer, Trevor Steven
Footballer Trevor Steven, born in Berwick in 1963, has written the preface for the book. He won 38 England caps – the first one awarded by Bobby Robson – and played for Burnley, Everton, and Rangers.
He says: “My grandfather passed away before I was born. There was always a sense of intrigue and curiosity around this man that I never got to meet.
“There were tales of the bunker he built in the back garden.
“But references to contributions he made in both wars were scant to say the least, so it has been exciting and so pleasing that this book has now shed much light on a person who was, to me, a mythical individual who left a full and quite extraordinary story behind him.”
The Spy in a Berwick Garden, published by Berwick Record Office, £9.99.
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