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The World War I Prisoner of War Camps in County Durham

During World War I four prisoner of war camps were established across the remote Weardale Valley, housing hundreds of German POWs to extract valuable resources for Britain's wartime steel industry. Whilst these camps have largely faded from public memory, their footprints survive through decaying septic tanks and hand carved gravestones. Peter Laurence explores the rough landscapes of southern Durham and the complex story of labour, loss and industrial necessity that unfolded here over a century ago.

While we quite rightly remember those who fought and gave their lives to defend our country during the First World War, we have almost forgotten the 116,000 German nationals and troops who were imprisoned in this country. Shortly after war was declared, Britain incarcerated 30,000 German and Austro-Hungarian civilians resident in the UK, other aliens who were visiting, and those living in overseas dependencies. The practice of confining enemy fighting troops in a dedicated camp was not new, but World War I saw the confinement of enemy troops on a significant, European-wide, scale. Across the UK, there were 563 POW camps, with research revealing four ‘working camps’ located in County Durham.


The initial optimism of the national press regarding the outcome of the war was challenged by rumours of poor conditions in the trenches and a shortage of weapons for the field guns. Unsuccessful offensives at Aubers Ridge and Neuve Chapelle, largely due to a shortage of shells, led to the collapse of the Liberal government and the establishment of the Ministry of Munitions. This shortage was exacerbated by a decline in foreign supply due to the conflict in Western Europe. A number of departments were set up in the ministry including the ‘Iron and Steel Production Department’, led by Sir John Hunter.

His department was tasked to solve the short supply of the ingredients used to make steel. Steel was not only needed to relieve the ammunition shortages, but also to make shovels, soup cans, mess tins, saddlery bits, spurs and other necessary equipment needed by the army. As well as pig-iron, limestone was needed to remove impurities and ganister was required to line furnaces3. It was decided that certain dormant quarries should be taken over by the Ministry and worked by German prisoners of war. Military prisoners were few until the failure of Germany’s Spring Offensive in 1917 and their final defeat in 1918, which inevitably led to a great increase in the number of captured troops. Between the summer and winter of 1918, around 340,000 Germans surrendered.


As Weardale was a significant source of raw materials such as lead, iron, coal, lime and gannister, four camps to accommodate the POWs were established in the region; Stanhope (Newlandside), Eastgate (Rose Hill), Castleside (Healeyfield), and Harperley, (Shipley Moss). The prisoners at Stanhope and Eastgate were employed to extract limestone, while the Healeyfield and Shipley Moss prisoners quarried for ganister.

Initially, the output from the prisoners in Weardale was less than half that produced by comparative British workers, but the introduction of piece-work trebled the yield. However, opposition from the Cleveland Miners and Quarrymen’s Association to prisoners being remunerated for their work, potentially at a cost to British labour, caused a re-evaluation of how the raw materials extracted by the prisoners was used. A settlement was reached whereby the prisoner’s output was held in reserve. Further complaints from the Association led to the prisoners only being allowed to work removing the waste material that lay above the raw materials. It was not until 1918 that a solution was finally reached, when the Association permitted the Ministry of Munitions to allow the prisoners to extract the raw materials on the condition that no British workers suffered a loss of earnings.


The Durham Camps


Shipley Moss

Situated just over a mile away from the better known Harperley Working Camp 93, a WWI camp was established at Shipley Moss. The 230 prisoners originally lived in tents while they constructed the buildings. In his book ‘Prisoners In The North East’, John Ruttley obtained two inspection reports from the Swiss Legation, delegated by the Red Cross to inspect German POW camps in Britain. In June 1917, they reported that Shipley Moss camp covered an area 900 square yards and the buildings consisted of eight dormitories with 28 men as well as a dining/recreation hut and three huts for ablutions. Each prisoner was assigned a straw mattress and four blankets. While their huts were heated by stoves.

The report also relates that a small brook provides water and waste is emptied into a septic tank. The ‘brook’, Shipley Burn, still runs and of the four Durham camps, Shipley Moss appears to be the only one to have confirmed standing archaeological remains (see the Eastgate POW camp section). The septic tank, a brick-built circular enclosure with a circumference of 33.2m and a diameter of 5.26m, still stands in what would have been the southeast corner of the camp. The brick wall is mostly intact, but further investigation of the feature and the field where the camp stood may not be possible due to reluctant landowners.


The Septic Tank Wall at Shipley Moss. (Peter Laurence)
The Septic Tank Wall at Shipley Moss. (Peter Laurence)

With no road access, the camp was supplied via the rail station at Harperley, a steep climb for the POWs. Fortunately for the occupants, the gannister they excavated from nearby Knitsley Quarry was transported to the Harperley railway station by a 2km aerial ropeway, 280m above the Weardale valley. The quarry was owned by Stobart’s Knitsley Fell Gannister Company and the raw material was used to produce special bricks designed to stand the intense heat of iron production kilns. John Ruttley discovered that the prisoners at the camp were afflicted by Spanish Flu, which killed 250,000 thousand people in Britain, with young people the most affected. As the prisoners confined and living closely together, the pandemic had a devastating impact with 27 inmates dying within three weeks during November 1918, The prisoners were buried at Hamsterley church and later interred in the Cannock Chase German Military Cemetery in Staffordshire.


A photograph taken in 2009 by Mick Garret features an area near to the entrance of Shipley Moss farm. A corrugated concrete block stands on a stone platform, which juts into the hillside, and is lined with layers of tumbling bricks on one side. A flat-headed metal stake rises from the platform to about a metre from the ground. Another stake has been severed to just a few inches and another lies flat. The block is surrounded by smaller rough-edged boulders left on the ground and discarded. These are the remains of quarry workings on Knitsley Fell and they serve as a memorial to the POWs from the camp at Shipley Moss who were forced to hew the gannister from the ground.


It is a short walk to the camp, following a path that steeply slopes downhill, eventually reaching the River Wear at the Harperley foot bridge. The camp site is now a pleasant meadow where cattle graze in the summer The only sounds come from the relentless chiffchaffs, woodpigeons and the running water from the stream that swirls around the circular brickwork that enclosed the camp’s filter bed. Thanks to John Ruttley, the memory of the POWs lives on, although it is likely that very few walking down the pleasant track that joins the Weardale Way, know their contribution to industrial Britain or the tragedy that befell 27 young men in a very few weeks in November 1918.


Handsforth Sub Camps

Handforth, a large WWI POW camp in Cheshire, was directly responsible for 17 small sub-camps across Britain, supplying the camps with food and equipment. Once the prisoners at Handforth were deemed to be of low risk, they were sent to the smaller camps. Two of the camps were in County Durham: Healeyfield (Castleside) and Newlandside (Stanhope).


Healeyfield (Castleside)

This was a small camp with 110 POWs and like all the WWI camps in Durham, the POWs were originally billeted in tents. Initially, food had to be cooked over a ‘fire trench’ until the tents were replaced with wooden huts in 1917 including a dedicated kitchen. Although unconfirmed, it is believed that the POWs worked at nearby Healeyfield (ganister) quarry, 0.3km to the SW. The ganister was transported to the railway via a tramway which was probably constructed by the POWs. The camp was situated on a prominent hill overlooking Healeyfield village and today all that remains is the concrete footings of a building standing in a barren field.


Courtesy of the History of Castleside Facebook Group
Courtesy of the History of Castleside Facebook Group
Healeyfield Camp in 2024 (Peter Laurence)
Healeyfield Camp in 2024 (Peter Laurence)

Newlandside (Stanhope)

This camp, situated near to Low Shittlehope Burn, housed 563 prisoners again in Bell tents and eventually wooden huts. Red Cross reports state that the camp suffered from low morale, especially after the accidental death of Joseph Ingert in May 1917. The prisoners worked at Newlandside quarry and Joseph suffered a dizzy spell while sitting on a wall and fell 30 metres. The prisoners also worked at the nearby quarries of Parson Byers and Rogerley, with the more fortunate employed on local farms.


Newlandside quarry is a significant scar on the beautiful Weardale countryside, covering 2.8 km². The B6278 towards Middleton-in-Teesdale rises steeply just south of Stanhope and after about a kilometre along the road, the quarry stretches out below to the west, a dark grey depression with murky pools, bleak, but still holding a stark beauty. The quarry opened sometime in the mid-nineteenth century and initially provided Galena, and later Fluorite, but mainly Limestone. The quarry is now worked by Hargreaves, who are recycling the four million waste tips on site to produce ‘secondary aggregates’ which are used for road construction, concrete production, and as a fill material.


Two gravestones formerly stood in the churchyard of St Thomas the Apostle, Stanhope, marking the burial place of two German prisoners who worked in the quarries. Fellow Prisoners inscribed the gravestones from the stone they were quarrying. In English, the markers reads:


Here rests in God Michael Krebs

Rifleman of Kurhessen Jägerbattalion No.11

Died on 25 October 1918 Due to an accident

Dedicated by his comrades

Here rests in God Karl Lux

Infantry Regiment 111

He died on 23 April 1918


Both prisoners were re-interred, or memorialised, at the Cannock Chase War Cemetery in Staffordshire. Sadly, the fate of the headstones is not recorded and it therefore highly likely they are lost. Perhaps it should be noted that the prisoners carved their “own” gravestones and for reasons lost in time, there is no record of Joseph Ingert at Cannock Chase.



In 2017, Northern Archaeological Associates, (NAA), carried out a survey on behalf of Durham County Council to assess the impact the construction new houses would have on any archaeological remains of the camp. The watching brief concluded that “no in situ archaeological evidence relating to the WWI Prisoner of War camp remained”. This was probably due to any structural remains being demolished to make way for a council depot. However, numerous early 20th century bottles were found during the assessment but and some were photographed before disposal. Thanks to Cura Terrae, the archaeology company that acquired NAA, we can see some of the ceramics and glassware.



Eastgate

This POW camp was situated between Eastgate and Westgate, housing 310 prisoners. POWs from here worked limestone at Heights Quarry and constructed the Cambokeels Incline between October 1916 and June 1917. This connected the quarry down to the North Eastern Railway Wear Valley. At the bottom of the incline are the remains of Cambokeels zinc, fluorspar and lead mine workings, much ravaged by vandals and scrap hunters, but enough surviving to show Weardale’s significant industrial history. The POWs were also employed as platelayers, labourers and boilermen on the Rookhope Railway System.

At the site of the camp, on the slope of a remote hill, there are several stone and brick ruined buildings, most of which belonged to the camp. With the owners permission, archaeological investigations will take place soon to determine which of them date to the First World War. Nearby Heights quarry was originally excavated by The Weardale Iron Company in 1850 after purchasing the uneconomic Heights lead mine. The company extracted the iron ore Limonite and limestone. Recent extensions by Aggregate Industries have uncovered the workings of the old lead mine.


At the start of World War I, anti-German feelings flourished among the British public, driven by the national press. While these emotions ameliorated amongst those who were in close contact with POWs and internees, the shame of this hatred, coupled with the intense memorialisation of our troops fighting on the Western front, is perhaps why the memory of the World War I prisoner camps has been largely forgotten.


Photograph courtesy of Peter Nattrass in Weardale Through Time
Photograph courtesy of Peter Nattrass in Weardale Through Time
A Building on the Site of Eastgate POW Camp (Heather Laurence Photography)
A Building on the Site of Eastgate POW Camp (Heather Laurence Photography)

Peter Laurence is an archaeologist exploring the hidden history and archaeology of the North East.


You can find his work at https://hiddenhistoryne.blogspot.com/

References:

2.      International Encyclopaedia of the First World War. https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/.

5.      Ernest Bate's on-line archive of information about Weardale Railway History. https://www.oldpway.info/weardale/index.html

7.      Prisoners In The North East’, John Ruttley.

9.      North East War Memorials Project. https://www.newmp.org.uk/parishes/german-prisoner-of-war-camp-1914-18/

10.  Town, M. (2017). Watching Brief at Shittlehope Burn Farm. Northern Archaeological Associates. https://doi.org/10.5284/1109513.

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