I was invited to see and photograph the site of former PoW 35 Boughton in Northamptonshire on Saturday the 12th of December. This site as it exists today is that of a small woodland. The current owner, son and grounds man took me around the site and we discussed its history. Malcolm Sanders in his WW2 P.O.W. Camps in the UK website provide some interesting information in that his notes shows the site as an Agricultural Hostel on a 1959 OS Map. The current owners father purchased the site in 1963 and the site had been cleared by the demolition down to foundations level. On purchasing the property, they choose to plant trees in such a way as to provide a sustainable natural looking woodland with the aim of producing Charcoal. Regrettably, this business venture did not work out Within the past few weeks the owners have been doing some ground clearance work and this has revived two substantial access roads constructed of Concrete as well as revealing a number of hut bases and other evidence Malcolm lists the site as being purpose built and it is the 1st time I have been to such a site where this could be clearly seen on the ground. The 1st part of the camp closest to the main road appears to be the Admin / Guard section of the camp comprising of Nissen Huts. The larger section of the camp appears to have been Maycrete Huts. The Northern of the two roads passes through both parts of the camp. What is remarkable here is that the evidence of the double gates between the two sections has serviced with a single gate post on the admin side AND the foundations of entry box or tower structures on the PoW side. On the Eastern side of the PoW area we discovered some thing I had not seen before – the remains / hut base of a Latrine / Ablutions block with open squares where WCs would have been sited along with fragments of what appear to be the remains of the WCs and or sinks. I will be up-dating and adding photos to my own website: Repatriated Landscape PoW Camp 35 Boughton Park I have a request from the site owners in that they are looking for more information and or above all any original Photographs of the site. If anyone has any photos or additional info then I would be grateful if you could either pass it to my self or contact me and I will provide the site owners contact details so that you can pass it directly to them. Martin Richards Syston.images@gmail.com
Thank you Martin. With all the info you supply I think I have about another ten to twenty years worth of work to update all the camp details! Best wishes.
I am just trying to pull the stuff together and include links to other peoples work to give some sort of central point for info. At the min though CV19 is messing things up as I was meant to exhibit my work at PoW Camp 21 Cultybraggan in one of their empty Nissen Huts ! Also I am now starting to get other people contacting me about the various sites such as Camp 35 where i had an invite to look the place over
