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The site of what is believed to be the world’s first purpose-built prisoner-of-war camp will soon be open to visitors.
The Norman Cross Camp, just south of Peterborough in Cambridgeshire, was established by the British government during the Napoleonic Wars.
Now the remains of the site have been bought by the Nene Park Trust, thanks to grants from Historic England and the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
The Trust says it intends to open the fields in which the camp’s remains are buried to visitors from September this year.
The Norman Cross Camp formed part of a network of prisons, or ‘depots’, across the country (the others being at Dartmoor and Perth), which were purposely built inland to deter escapees.
The 15-hectare site just east of the Great North Road (now the A1) was more than just a prison, however. It functioned as a self-contained town, with barracks, offices, a hospital, a marketplace, and a school.
At its peak during the Napoleonic Wars, it housed 7,000 mainly French prisoners – typically soldiers and sailors – who, according to accounts, were treated well by their captors.
Prisoners were allowed to make products such as toys, model ships, and domino sets to sell at a local market.
Some of these artefacts were uncovered by the archaeology programme Time Team during an evacuation at Norman Cross in July 2009.
The site was dismantled at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, with a memorial erected in 1914 to the 1,770 prisoners who died there, mainly of typhus.
The Napoleonic-era historian Paul Chamberlain described Norman Cross, which in many ways was a prototype for future prisoner-of-war camps, as ‘unique and historic’.
‘This acquisition will enable more of the story to be told for future generations and provide us with a better understanding of a lost town that had a significant impact on the region over 200 years ago,’ he added.
