Runaway mother Constance Marten planned to smuggle her baby abroad to stop her being taken away by authorities, a court heard.

Aristocrat Marten, 36, and her partner Mark Gordon, 49, are on trial over the death of newborn Victoria while living off-grid in a tent on the South Downs in freezing conditions last year.

Today Marten was in the witness box at the Old Bailey giving evidence.

Defence barrister Francis Fitzgibbon KC went over the timeline which saw Marten and Gordon zigzag the country before reaching Newhaven on January 8.

Asked why she and Gordon had travelled to Newhaven, Marten said: “We wanted to be near a port. We wanted to get a cottage we could pay for with cash and also to be near a port to find someone who could smuggle us and her [baby Victoria] abroad.”

Marten told the court she had given birth to baby Victoria in a rented holiday cottage in Northumberland on Christmas Eve.  

She told the court that their options were dwindling after they left Manchester on January 5 and reached London on January 7.

She said: “We wanted to get a flat in East Ham but we realised there was no way that was going to happen.

“Our options were slowly diminishing so we thought let’s get a tent and lay low away from prying eyes.”

Marten denied allowing her baby to come to any harm.

Mr Fitzgibbon asked her: “Did you do anything to harm baby Victoria?”

Marten replied: “Absolutely not.”

Mr Fitzgibbon said: “Did you do anything cruel to baby Victoria?”

Marten said: “No. I did nothing but show her love.”

She told the court she did not expose her baby to cold or allow her to get too hot so far as she was aware.

Mr Fitzgibbon said: “So far as you are concerned, did you give her anything less than the proper care you thought she deserved?”

Marten replied: “I gave her the best that any mother would.”

She told jurors Victoria died on January 9 last year. Baby Victoria’s badly decomposed body was found in a Lidl bag inside an allotment shed off Lynchet Close in Hollingdean, Brighton, on March 1, 2023.

Marten said: “I do not think it is anything I will ever move on from. I feel guilty because she was in my arms. I feel like it’s not an easy thing to live with.”

“I think initially it was disbelief, shock, intense grief.”

Greater Manchester Police had launched a nationwide search after a placenta was found in the couple’s burnt-out car by the motorway near Bolton, Greater Manchester, last January 5.

Marten told the court she and Gordon were moving every one to three days so the local authority could not have jurisdiction over their baby.

“We were moving as much as we could for Victoria,” Marten said.

She told the court she wanted to avoid social services so their baby would not be taken away.

Mr Fitzgibbon said: “Why did you think she would be taken?”

“Because my four other kids had been taken,” Marten said.

Marten became tearful when she was asked if she had ever harmed any of her five children.

She said: “Absolutely not. Mark and I love our kids more than anything in the world so I’m pretty angry about the fact they had to go through this process. It’s not good enough.”

Challenged on the prosecution suggestion she and Gordon put their interests ahead of the children, she said: “No, there is literally nothing I would not do for my children.”

Ahead of a break in her evidence, Judge Mark Lucraft KC warned Marten not to speak to anyone and noted seeing Gordon pass her a note before she began her evidence.

He told her: “He must not do that. It’s you giving evidence, not him.”

While the cause of the baby’s death is “unascertained”, jurors have heard she could have died from the cold or co-sleeping.

Marten told police Victoria died when she fell asleep in the tent while holding her under her jacket.

The court has heard Marten had previously been warned by social workers of the risks of falling asleep with the baby on her and that a tent would be “wholly inappropriate for a baby to live in”.

Marten told the court: “She [baby Victoria] was our pride and joy. Our whole reason for being in the tent was for Victoria and not any other reason.”

Marten denied ever carrying Victoria in a supermarket carrier bag while she was alive.

The defendants, of no fixed address, deny manslaughter by gross negligence, perverting the course of justice, concealing the birth of a child, child cruelty and causing or allowing the death of a child.

The trial continues.