THIS Saturday sees the start of new BBC drama Gunpowder about the plot to blow up Parliament in 1605. Local historian David Hallmark explains why Worcestershire is central to the story.

Starring Kit Harington, who went to school in Worcester and still socialises locally, Gunpowder follows Robert Catesby, the infamous terrorist who hired Guy Fawkes as part of an attempt to assassinate King James I by blowing up Parliament in 1605.

Of course, Harington is far from Worcestershire’s only link to the Gunpowder plot.

Worcestershire was the hub of the world famous plot to kill king and Parliament in November 1605.

Families from Worcestershire houses were at the centre of planning to kill the king and to capture a princess to control, and on whom to place the crown and to restore the Catholic rule from Rome. The co-incidence of the letter ‘H’ adds a twist to the story, for the houses were Hagley, Harvington, Hewell Grange, Hindlip, and Huddington with Holbeache in South Staffordshire on the border. Chastleton, on the border with Oxfordshire, and Throckmorton on the borders with Warwickshire, were other family homes involved.

It was a letter sent from Hindlip to London in October 1605 which disclosed the plot and which led to the arrest not only of Guy Fawkes but all the other plotters. Some plotters were killed being arrested and some were arrested and then executed – some in London and some in Worcester.

One of those executed in Worcester was Edward Oldcorne, sometimes also known as Hall, who was captured after the sheriff besieged Hindlip and this Jesuit Priest surrendered.

Today, this man who was prosecuted and convicted on terrorism and treason charges is commemorated by a school named after him in Worcester. What other city would have a perpetrator of treachery rewarded by a scholastic institution near where the plotter was executed?

In the modern era of trashing historical monuments of Cecil Rhodes in Oxford or General Lee in America, Worcester is a beacon of tolerance treating a man both terrorist and martyr with a monument.

History being demolished is not history being deleted for the stories live on and instead of causing closure cause resentment, which rebounds in later generations into revenge.

The wisdom of naming a school after a felon with his faith is evident by the message both the man and the school name gives to posterity.

In the BBC series a key character is played by Kit Harington whose education was in part at Martley and in part at Worcester Sixth Form College. The plot of 1605 is being replayed in 2017 with Worcestershire still in the middle of the story.

Gunpowder, a three-part series, begins on BBC One this Saturday at 9.10pm.