GIRLS SCHOOL
“Aultmore House was a finishing school for very, very well-healed young ladies. We’re talking Saudi Princesses! ”
For 17 years, the school was owned and run by Dawn Hargreaves and her husband Charles. That evening, after having coffee & cakes with the Zimmermans at Aultmore, we arranged to meet Dawn and her friends for dinner at La Taverna, an Italian restaurant in the nearby tourist town of Aviemore.
Dawn was then in her early 80s and by the twinkle in her eye and her sparkling conversation, we could tell she’d lived a full and fascinating life. Her friends joining us were ‘rather upper-crust’ and there was mention of ‘Harry’ coming up next week. I presumed they were talking about ‘Prince’.
“What was more interesting was Dawn’s own story, which, over a few glasses of wine, came out. ”
COMMANDO TRAINING
Long before they were married and at the outset of WWII, Dawn’s husband had been involved in the establishment of the Commando Training Post in nearby Spean Bridge.
Achnacarry Castle was regarded as the finest of all the WWII Allied special training centres and soldiers from across Britain, the USA, France, Holland, Belgium, Poland and Norway came to train under the shadow of Ben Nevis, Britain’s highest mountain.
After rigorous training, the New Zealander was parachuted into Yugoslavia to work with the Serbian nationalist guerrilla force, the ‘Chetniks’. His orders were to "make himself useful", which he proceeded to do with ambush operations against the Germans.
Commander of the Chetnik forces in Yugoslavia, Draža Mihailović ,confers with his men during WWII
Later, he fell into the hands of the enemy still wearing his Chetnik badge and the Germans, assuming he was a terrorist, sent him to the Gestapo prison in Belgrade where he underwent brutal interrogation before being sentenced to death.
Hargreaves protested that he was a British officer and was finally granted the benefit of the doubt, transferred to a concentration camp at Buchenwald and then, due to his declining health, to Colditz Castle. There, he teamed up with fellow New Zealander and friend, Captain Charles Upham, a double VC winner. Upham was the last man to be awarded the Victoria Cross - twice. He is only one of three to have achieved that and the only one to have actually been a combat soldier.
There they remained until liberated in 1945! Hargreaves came back to London and installed himself in the Ritz in London as the guest of the hotel-owner. The absence of cash was of no concern…
ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE
Hargreave’s peacetime activities were no less derring-do! He was clearly a bit of a ‘James Bond’ character. Hargreaves travelled the world under the guise of a ‘Queen's Messenger’, delivering classified material and carrying out ‘matters’ on behalf of MI5, the British Intelligence agency.
In 1964, he met Dawn Mackay, the young headmistress of Heathfield School near Ascot in England. They married and moved to Hatchlands near Guildford to run a finishing school for girls. Later, they purchased and moved to Aultmore House and operated a girls’ school there for a further 17 years.
At the age of 75, Edgar Charles Stewart Hargreaves was invited back to New Zealand along with his friend, Charles Upham, where their achievements were celebrated in a ‘This is Your Life’ programme.
Hargreaves died in Grantown-on-Spey on the 4th of February 2005. Dawn died in her 90th year in Grantown.
I was very glad to have made her acquaintance!
