The Explore....
Away on business for a couple of days so in between sites I decided to go for a little solo mooch around one of the local explores......
A Bit of History.....
Prisoner of War Camp 116 was set up in 1941 to house Italian prisoners of war, and from 1943-1944 it mainly held German and Austrian prisoners.
The POW's were allowed out to work on the nearby farms and one local has this memory of it......"The Austrian and German prisoners of war were kept in a camp at Hatfield Heath and sent out daily to 'help on the land'.
Our first batch were Austrian and they were hard workers and Mum was so sorry for them she looked at their ration for the day and promptly invited them to share our food - they even ate with us. The next lot were German and all but one of those were also polite, hard workers and they too shared our food and ate in the kitchen with us. My biggest impression was the way they stood whenever Mum got up and would never sit until she too sat down. Dad corresponded for some time with one of them, a Walter Scheile from Beilefeld in Germany."
The English Heritage Document entitled "PRISONER OF WAR CAMPS (1939 – 1948)" has this to say about it
Camp 116 conforms to the so-called ‘Standard’ layout, with the guards’ compound consisting of MoWP huts, while the living huts are all timber Laing huts.
The work was totally voluntary and the lifestyle quite enjoyable in comparison to the life British POWs endured in German hands.
There were a lot of Italians at the main camp in Hatfield Heath, which was built for about 750 people. The camp was non-Nazi, so it was classed low-risk and there was a War Agricultural Committee which arranged for Land Girls to pick up prisoners and take them to allotted farms and then take them back again. There were also two satellite camps, one in Matching Tye and one in Bishop's Stortford, which were on a smaller scale and the prisoners at the Matching Tye camp were sent to work on land which is now Harlow.
On with the piccies......
Thanks for lookin'
I hope you enjoyed the report...... I Will Knot
Away on business for a couple of days so in between sites I decided to go for a little solo mooch around one of the local explores......
A Bit of History.....
Prisoner of War Camp 116 was set up in 1941 to house Italian prisoners of war, and from 1943-1944 it mainly held German and Austrian prisoners.
The POW's were allowed out to work on the nearby farms and one local has this memory of it......"The Austrian and German prisoners of war were kept in a camp at Hatfield Heath and sent out daily to 'help on the land'.
Our first batch were Austrian and they were hard workers and Mum was so sorry for them she looked at their ration for the day and promptly invited them to share our food - they even ate with us. The next lot were German and all but one of those were also polite, hard workers and they too shared our food and ate in the kitchen with us. My biggest impression was the way they stood whenever Mum got up and would never sit until she too sat down. Dad corresponded for some time with one of them, a Walter Scheile from Beilefeld in Germany."
The English Heritage Document entitled "PRISONER OF WAR CAMPS (1939 – 1948)" has this to say about it
Camp 116 conforms to the so-called ‘Standard’ layout, with the guards’ compound consisting of MoWP huts, while the living huts are all timber Laing huts.
The work was totally voluntary and the lifestyle quite enjoyable in comparison to the life British POWs endured in German hands.
There were a lot of Italians at the main camp in Hatfield Heath, which was built for about 750 people. The camp was non-Nazi, so it was classed low-risk and there was a War Agricultural Committee which arranged for Land Girls to pick up prisoners and take them to allotted farms and then take them back again. There were also two satellite camps, one in Matching Tye and one in Bishop's Stortford, which were on a smaller scale and the prisoners at the Matching Tye camp were sent to work on land which is now Harlow.
On with the piccies......
Thanks for lookin'
I hope you enjoyed the report...... I Will Knot 
