UK POW Camps today

Discussion in 'United Kingdom' started by Andreas, Mar 15, 2015.

  1. Andreas

    Andreas Working on two books

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  2. dbf

    dbf Moderatrix MOD

    http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-30398060

    What happened to WW2 POW camps?
    More than 500,000 Italian and German fighters were brought to Britain as prisoners of war during World War Two. They spent the remainder of the war in commandeered stately homes, old Army barracks or hastily thrown together huddles of huts, often built by the prisoners themselves. But what happened to the 1,500 POW camps they called home?

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    Cultybraggan camp is one of only a handful of former POW camps in Great Britain which still has many of its World War Two features

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    Camp 13, The Hayes, Derbyshire
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    The Hayes was built in the 1860s by Francis Wright as a wedding present for his son Fitzherbert and during World War One it housed girls from two evacuated London schools

    The Hayes, in Derbyshire, was the scene of one of the most famous German escape bids.
    Ace fighter-plane flyer Franz von Werra successfully tunnelled out with four other prisoners, the noise of their efforts masked by a performance of the POW choir.

    Posing as a downed Dutch pilot he then managed to get into the cockpit of a Hurricane and was preparing to fly home when he was discovered.

    Hayes archivist John Tranter said the entrance to the 50-yard tunnel Von Werra and his co-conspirators dug was only discovered in 1980 behind a fireplace in room 102.

    Built as a house in the 1860s, the Hayes in Swanwick became a Christian Conference Centre in 1911, a role to which it reverted after being requisitioned as a POW camp.

    Today, it is one of three conference and event centres run by the Christian Conference Trust, a charity which hosts gatherings and meetings for Christian organisations, charities and businesses.

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    The story of Franz von Werra, who escaped from The Hayes, was brought to the silver screen in the 1957 film The One That Got Away starring Hardy Kruger

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    Camp 83, Eden Camp, North Yorkshire
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    Eden Camp, one of the best preserved prisons, is now a war museum

    When the first prisoners were marched through Malton, North Yorkshire, to the newly-assembled Eden Camp in 1942, few would have thought they would be accepted by the community.

    After all, these were the enemies the British soldiers had been fighting. But Eden Camp's inmates did integrate, first through work details to help farmers, then by forming bands and holding dances in the town.

    The camp is now a war museum and archivist Jonny Pye said prison life was surprisingly pleasant for the low-risk inmates, who were easily identifiable by large red circle patches on the backs of their uniforms.

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    "They became well-known and a part of the community and came to be seen as people just like us," he said.

    Local people developed their own view of the incomers. One noted: "The Italians spent most of their time singing, posing and trying to catch the eye of any female, while the Germans proved more hardworking and reliable than their Latin counterparts."

    Eden Camp is one of the best preserved POW camps in the country with its 34 remaining huts attracting 160,000 annual visitors. It is one of only 12 in the UK that still look much as they did during World War Two, according to English Heritage.

    After the war, Eden Camp was used to house displaced persons before becoming a home for agricultural labourers and then, in 1955, a grain drying and storage centre.

    In 1985 businessman Stan Johnson bought it with a view to turning it into a crisp factory, but a group of Italian former inmates gave him the idea of creating a war museum, which opened two years later.

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    Much of Eden Camp remains, although the old guards' quarters now house an agricultural vehicle business and an electricity substation has been built next door


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    Camp 21, Cultybraggan, Comrie, Perthshire
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    More than 100 of Cultybraggan's huts remain

    Maximum security Cultybraggan held 4,500 of the most extreme Nazis and was patrolled by Polish guards.

    In December 1944 it was the scene of the brutal murder of interpreter Feldwebel Wolfgang Rosterg.
    Rosterg had been sent to the camp by mistake and was accused by inmates of exposing a mass escape plan from another camp. He was tortured and beaten before being hanged in Cultybraggan's bathhouse.

    Five German soldiers were tried for his murder in London and hanged at HMP Pentonville.
    After the war, the camp became an Army training facility and monitoring post, with a bunker built to house the BBC, government ministers, BT and other important groups in the event of an escalation of the Cold War.

    In 2007 the camp was taken over by the Comrie Development Trust (CDT) and some of the more than 100 remaining huts have been converted into business units.

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    Cultybraggan housed the most dedicated Nazis and it is rumoured Rudolf Hess spent a night there

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    Camp 90, Friday Bridge, Cambridgeshire
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    After the war Friday Bridge became a camp for agricultural workers, a purpose it is still used for today

    Seventy years after it opened, Friday Bridge is the last camp to still be used for something like its original purpose - although foreign labourers now reside where enemy prisoners would once have been held.

    The camp hosted Italians and Ukrainians from 1943 before becoming a hostel for agricultural workers after the war.

    Recruitment firm WMS now uses the camp as its base and has built an accommodation block to house 400 European agricultural workers who come to work in Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire.
    Robert Bell, assistant curator at Wisbech and Fenland Museum, said many residents had stories about the camp.

    "Many have first-hand experience of it, either by meeting inmates, working at the camp or even being related to prisoners who stayed on after the war."

    The museum has several artefacts made by prisoners, including doll shoes made from bread, an articulated snake and a brass ring.

    Mr Bell said although they were prisoners, many of the inmates had a great amount of freedom to leave the camp and mingle with the locals.

    "It's quite interesting how the prisoners circulated relatively freely about the towns and villages."

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    The Italian inmates were sent out to work in the fields around Friday Bridge

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    Camp 93, Harperley, County Durham
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    Harperley is closed to the public

    Though many of Harperley's huts are still standing on a slope overlooking Weardale, the camp's real value lies in the graffiti left there by its inmates.

    The camp opened in 1943 to house low-level prisoners, firstly from Italy and - after 1944 - Germany.
    "The common view is that the Italian POWs were pleased to be out of the war, but what they wrote on Harperley's walls challenges that," says Roger Thomas, of English Heritage.

    Scrawled inside are phrases such as Viva Mussolini, which Mr Thomas said indicated some prisoners were still strongly supportive of the war effort.

    The latter inmates painted pictures of the German landscape on the huts' walls.

    "Though the buildings at other camps can still be seen they are essentially dumb, they show the camp but don't tell you what life was like for the prisoners," says Mr Thomas.

    "Harperley still has the ghosts of its prisoners."

    After 1948 the 1,500-capacity camp became a base for displaced persons, many of whom came from Eastern European countries which were now under the sway of the Soviet Union.

    However, Harperley has been in private ownership since 2001 and, after a brief spell as a museum and garden centre, is now completely closed to the public.

    Two of the 49 huts have been converted into homes for the owner and his family, while Durham County Council has given planning permission for one of the buildings to be used as a cheese factory.

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    English Heritage said Harperley's value lies in the graffiti left by inmates
     
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  3. dbf

    dbf Moderatrix MOD

  4. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

    Attached Files:

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  5. Bernard85

    Bernard85 WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    good day dbf,super moderators.yesterday,11:21am.re:P.O.W CAMPS TODAY.a great informative post on .pow's.in the u,k,a brilliant photo collection.thank you for sharing.if you get the time,could you tell me if there was a camp in neston.warell.thanks in advanced.regards bernard85
     
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  6. TriciaF

    TriciaF Junior Member

  7. celebman

    celebman Member

    POW Camp 1008
    Alvaston
    Derby

    photo from Google earth as it is today, only outlines visible from the air remain
     

    Attached Files:

  8. Lindele

    Lindele formerly HA96

  9. Jane Nix

    Jane Nix Jane

    Hi

    My fathers service record states he was posted to 93 Polish Repatriation Ctr in January 1946. The only reference I can find to 93 camp is the one at Harperley nr. Durham. This would fit as he was part of the Durham Light Infantry, however what I've read so far states it was a POW camp in 1946 and didn't become a repatriation center until 1948. Could this be the same camp? Would they have housed both in 1946 or would it just have been POW's? If not the same place, how can I find out where 93 PRC would have been?

    Thanks in advance.
     
  10. Lindele

    Lindele formerly HA96

    Good question Jayne,

    I hope someone knows.
    Stefan.
     
  11. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    I suggest you contact the authors of the book mentioned here.
    POLISH RESETTLEMENT CAMPS IN THE UK 1946
     
  12. Jane Nix

    Jane Nix Jane

    Will do.

    Many thanks!
     
  13. Skoyen89

    Skoyen89 Senior Member

    Henllan Camp in Ceredigion (Cardiganshire) is still in good condition and has a great chapel made by the Italians held there.
     
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  14. jetson

    jetson Junior Member

    I worked at a mushroom farm six years after the war. The chap who did the technical side i.e "planting" the spawn, tending the stable manure growing beds, cutting the mushrooms for market etc was an ex local German PW. He was a very amiable, respected character who later became a sub postmaster and off licence owner, having married a local lady. After his retirement, they returned to live in West Germany.
     
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  15. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    This document may have been posted before.

    German Prisoners of War in Britain

    As for individual camps

    No 81 Pingley Farm just outside Brigg North Lincolnshire...a few years ago a few temporary buildings remained but of late there has been a Planning Application for housing development.

    No 52 Nether Headon near Retford Nottinghamshire for many years the site has been used as a "business park"....a scuffy one at that in rural countryside.

    No 53 Sandbeds, west of Brayton,Selby...now confirmed as being on the site of the former Middlebrook's mushroom factory....left unused for many years...plans for a travellers' site were abandoned after protests from the adjacent housing estate residents.
     
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  16. Lindele

    Lindele formerly HA96

    Harry,
    what an excellent summary attached to your post.
    Being a German POW in Non-Soviet hands was indeed a privilege.

    Both my dad and a good friend of mine were in British/US camps, came back home and lived a good life until 1989 respectively 2015. One of my uncles came back from Siberia in 1955 and was a broken man.
    My dad worked for the Brits in Hanover for a while and my friend worked at farm in the US and later in Scotland and stayed there for a number of years before returning to his family in East Germany.


    Stefan.
     
  17. Osborne2

    Osborne2 Well-Known Member

    There is no accurate list of POW Camps available. The best is
    Prisoner of War Camps (1939 - 1948) | Historic England
    Many camps had hostels attached to the main camp, so looking for a relative, or where an ancestor may have actually lived and worked is perhaps more complicated than one might think.

    An example of the missing data. Camp 180/189 eventually managed at one point 18 hostels across what is now Greater Manchester and Chester. These hostels included, from memory, at least four other camps, Walgherton, Tarporley, Ledsham and Dunham Park that had previously been numbered camps themselves. The hostels existed for as long as there was a need in the area they served, so times of existence varied. Many were ex Anti Aircraft Gun sites, such as Broxton, Red Brow and others searchlight sites, e.x. Eddisbury. Other large numbers of POWs were in Chester working in Western Command premises (after the war!). Some of the numbers in hostels were large, into the hundreds. Another confusion was the hostels carried the number of the parent camp, so Weston at Crewe carried the number 189 yet it was nearly 20 miles from its parent.

    While Camp 180/189 managed 18 at its peak, it did in fact during its three and a half year existence manage well over 20 as some hostels were closed and replaced by others.

    The one way I was able to obtain this detail was to use the English Heritage list (which has understandable and excusable errors as records are so poor) and pull any National Archives that exist for each camp in the general area of interest and glean the lists of hostels you find in there. Sometimes there are even names of prisoners for those who are lucky and very occasionally their home locations. It is however random rare, luck.
     
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  18. Lindele

    Lindele formerly HA96

    Thank you for this information.
    I will certainly do some extra research.

    Stefan.
     
  19. jimbop

    jimbop Banned

  20. emanuele

    emanuele New Member

    Hi, did u worked at the camp 53? ( Yorkschire Brayton /Selby). If u did have u heard of an italian pow named Pocci Luigi? Thanks
     

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