#08aug

Leatherslade Farm, Buckinghamshire circa 13 August 1963. The staging point and hideout for the gang behind The Great Train Robbery which had occurred on 8 August. £2.6 million was stolen at the time (somewhere between £50-60 million today).

16 robbers were 'trackside' at the robbery (with a few others having an involvement before and after the event). All bar one had criminal records. They hid out at Leatherslade briefly after the robbery but started to move out on the 9 August after monitoring news reports of what the police were doing.

On 14 August Roger Cordrey was the first to be caught following a tip-off when he paid in cash to rent a garage to hide his loot. The owner of the garage, a policeman's widow, put two and two together and Cordrey was arrested along with a William Boal who was in his company at the time. Cordrey had been the leader of a gang called The South Coast Raiders and had earlier come up with a simple but effective method of stopping trains by rigging the trackside signals.

Eleven of the Great Train Robbers were later identified from fingerprints and other forensic evidence found by the police at Leatherslade (such as footwear marked with yellow paint used to try and disguise ex-military vehicles they had used in the robbery). No better way to disguise a military vehicle in rural 1960's England than to slap bright yellow paint on it.

Four men apparently kept gloves on the whole time they were at the farm and were never officially identified.

Cordrey's fingerprints hadn't been found at the farm so unlucky for him that he chose the wrong place to stash his cash. He ended up being the only member of the trackside robbers to plead guilty but did receive a lighter sentence as a result. He was released in 1971.