THE SECRET OF OFFA STREET, HEREFORD

Offa Street is a short side road in the very centre of Hereford, leading from East Street to St. Peter's Square, the site of Hereford's War Memorial. A sharp right where Offa Street meets St. Peter's Square, along St. Owen Street, and the eager VBCW tourist quickly arrives at Hereford Town Hall. But Offa Street itself has always remained somewhat anonymous:

Offa Street in late Victorian times. St Peter's Church prominent
at the top of this anonymous side road.

The same view some 100 years later, and Offa Street is little changed.
The buildings on the near left have disappeared, replaced by a car park.
This loss has been variously attributed to  municipal vandalism,
 road widening, subsidence and neglect, or (most persuasively)
 bomb damage during the VBCW.
St. Peter's Church still dominates the view.

The top of Offa Street, 1909. St Peter's Church is behind us.
T. Lindsey Price, a purveyor of "furniture, carpets and linoleums",
occupies the commercial premises where Offa Street meets St. Peters Square.
The first floor appears to be vacant. Note column in entranceway.

The same view sixteen years later, in 1925. T. Lindsey Price has now given way
to Frank Hodges, an "Up to Date Tailor" and maker of breeches.
The first floor has been taken by the Pearl Insurance Office.
Within 13 years, by 1938, both businesses will be deeply affected by the VBCW.
(Frank Hodges order book for breeches had never been so full, while the
 Pearl Insurance Office rapidly entered insolvency in the face of
 of a huge number of damage to property claims). The column remains.

A contemporary photograph, nearly 100 years later. Frank Hodges is long gone, as is the
Pearl Insurance Office. The building has been renamed "Offa House" and smartened up,
but is externally unchanged. Sunderlands & Thompsons, local estate agents, occupy the
whole of the refurbished building. The column appears to have escaped remodelling.

But this is not our usual blogpost of "before and after the VBCW" photographs of Herefordshire. Oh no. What could be "The Secret of Offa Street", and what does it have to do with the Very British Civil War ? In order to answer these very pressing questions, we need to take another short walk, back down Offa Street itself...

The modern view down Offa Street, Sunderlands & Thompsons on the left.
Two eager VBCW researchers, one carrying a heavy bag of VBCW guide books,
 cross from right to left and head downwards. Their destination is only too obvious....

At No. 3 Offa Street lies the Victorian red brick Headquarters of the Hereford Cattle Society, formerly known as - big spoiler coming up - the Hereford Herd Book Society.

A contemporary photograph of the Hereford Cattle Society, a fine Victorian
red brick on the corner of Offa Street and East Street. The building is unchanged
from Victorian times (see photographs 1 and 2 above, on the right) and hence
from 1938.

A contemporary close up of the entrance to the Cattle Society, demonstrating in stone
the importance of the Hereford breed to the globe - or, as some say, the world economy.
 The ever present St. Peter's Church to the left.

The Hereford Herd Book Society was founded in 1878 by Mr John Hungerford Arkwright of Hampton Court (Castle). This followed the publication of the first "herd book" of Hereford cattle in 1846 by Thomas Eyton of Wellington, Shropshire. As the modern day Cattle Society have recently noted : "Since 1886, the herd book has been closed to any animal with a sire or dam not previously recorded, so for over 130 years there has been continuous breeding."

By 1938, of course, the Herd Book (in fact, by that time, quite a number of books) had some 50 years of records, not just of breeding, but of planned improvement via breeding. While the Cattle Society and Herefordshire's farmers were entirely innocent of any greater (or malign) purpose than increasing the heft and value of Hereford cattle, the presence of such a rare archive of biological information was an irresistible lure to a wide variety of less well disposed VBCW factions - principally the sinister eugenicists of the BUF "Scientific Research Section" and, for very different reasons, the Lysenkoists of the Presteigne Soviet.

On the hunt for the "Hereford Herd Book" - Storm Leader Starborgling
and members of the sinister BUF Scientific Research Section. Could they use
 the historical and biological information within the  Hereford Herd Book as a
 valuable tool in their continuing eugenic quest to create "a BUF Superman" ?

Nor was that all. By 1938, the Hereford Herd Book Society had exported the Hereford breed to many different countries, principally the United States of America and Ireland. Acquisition of original historical breeding records, represented by the "Hereford Herd Book", could therefore be considered a "top national priority" in these countries, and the rumoured despatch (with full deniability, of course) of "Snatch Squads" from Washington and Dublin to the chaos of VBCW Herefordshire is still a matter of heavily contested debate within specialist historical circles.

Eamonn O'Toole (etc.) and his Squad of "Mad Bomberz". Sometimes portrayed
as no more than a Fenian Anarchist, was the O'Toole in fact "a deniable agent" of
 De Valera, tasked with ensuring the destruction of the Hereford Herd Book
 before it fell into "the wrong hands"?  

Not our Hereford.......the entrance road to Hereford, Texas, USA. Some say that this prominent
sign is no more than the usual "Madison Avenue chicanery"; others suggest that
 "Hereford Texas" originated as a secretive US Govt. scientific research station, set up to
exploit the knowledge of the "snatched Hereford Herd Book".

One day, perhaps, the full and accurate story of the valiant defence of the original "Herd Book" by members of the Hereford Society will be told - the smuggling of the records, the checkpoints, the betrayals and gun-battles. However and for some time yet, we suspect, it will still remain "The Secret of Offa Street"....

Notes :

(1). for an interesting and detailed view of the Arkwright family and of Hampton Court, see HERE.

(2). for our "List of Hereford Country Houses", including Hampton Court, see HERE

(3). for the modern day Hereford Cattle Society, including valuable particulars of forthcoming stock auctions and semen sales, see HERE. For obvious and entirely understandable reasons, the Cattle Society's historical commentary entirely omits any mention of "the difficult years" of the VBCW.

(4). Equally unsurprising, at least to dedicated VBCW researchers, the relevant national records of the United States and the Republic of Ireland are either still under permanent security embargo, or simply listed as "missing, presumed lost".

(5). For a speculative and highly colourised American account of relevant VBCW events, published shortly after "The Pentagon Papers" in 1968 and therefore shorn of the public attention it otherwise deserved, see "The Hereford Herd Book Heist" by Runyon (Area 51 Publishers, Nevada). It is now difficult to get hold of a copy, perhaps on the basis that the US Govt. are alleged to have instituted a "mass purchase initiative", but the occasional PDF can still be found on the dark web.