Scrawled in looped handwriting among crates of candles in a walk-in storage cupboard, the pencil lines are still clearly visible on the wall at Audley End house. But for years, what – or who – the list in the 17th-century Essex mansion referred to was a mystery.
Now the meaning has finally been unlocked, thanks to two Polish historians. They tracked 80 years of records and found that the list referred to six Polish special forces soldiers who trained at the grand Jacobean property during the second world war.
