Inside Harperley Prisoner of War camp on the edge of Weardale

Some have gaping holes where their windows have fallen out, and several have trees growing through their foundations.

The huts of Harperley prisoner of war camp. All pictures by Sarah CaldecottThese are the remains of Working Camp 93, also known as Harperley Prisoner of War Camp, which is this weekend opening up to the public for the first time in a decade. The two guided tours are fully booked but, if there is enough interest, more will be arranged over the summer, perhaps culminating in the first show for nearly 80 years in the remarkable theatre.

“It is selfish of us living here and not letting people see it,” says landowner James McLeod. “The theatre especially is crying out to be seen.”

Landowner James McLeod in the door of one of the huts at HarperleyThe camp is just off the A68, between Crook and Wolsingham, and it is one of only about five PoW camps that survive intact from the Second World War. But the theatre and the prisoners’ artwork in the kantine make it utterly unique.

“There are 49 derelict huts at the moment, but it is the atmosphere that sucks people in,” says James.

In the spring sunshine, skylarks scatter their song high over head, clouds chase each other across the far side of the dale, and a white-throated treecreeper edges its way up a timber doorframe of a hut. Now the only residents in the camp are owls – little and barn – which make their homes in the tumbledown huts, guarded by a couple of peacocks who shriek their eerie cry through the quiet of the countryside.

Harperley prisoner of war camp, by Sarah CaldecottThe huts were once home to more than 1,000 men – maximum occupancy was 1,473.

From January 1943, they were Italian prisoners captured in north Africa. These men were first housed in tents while they assisted in the construction of the huts, and they must have shivered when the Weardale winter dropped five inches of snow on their canvas shelters.

However, once the regulation huts were complete, fabricated out of 'maycrete' panels which made them 18½ft wide and 60ft long, the prisoners were fairly comfortable: two tiers of bunks, 12 down each side, so 48 men to a hut, heated by one, perhaps two, metal stoves, lit by electricity, and nearby ablutions huts with drainage systems.

Peter and Heather Laurence among the dormitory huts at Harperley. They are giving their first guided tours this weekend with, hopefully, more to follow over the summer“At the time, Durham miners and farmers had outdoor netties and tin baths in front of the fire, but here the prisoners had electricity in their huts and indoor washing facilities,” says archaeologist Peter Laurence who, with his wife Heather is running the tours.

Italy surrendered in September 1943 and the prisoners were repatriated. After D-Day in June 1944, Harperley was filled with captured Germans.

The camp when it was occupied by prisoners, with nicely tended gardens outside the hutsThey were low-risk prisoners, not senior officers and not members of the Nazi Party – the barbed wire fence around the camp was probably only head high, and the local joke was that it was as much to keep the Weardale women out as it was to keep in the prisoners who had an average age of 22.

The camp was established in rural Durham so the prisoners could work the land. Six days a week they had to be on the concrete parade ground at 7am for counting before being transported to farms.

This was a major logistics exercise, taking them out and bringing them back for 7pm. For their day’s efforts, they got a few English pennies (which they were not allowed to keep), “three horrible cigarettes”, and a simple but warm meal cooked by a fellow prisoner.

In the kantine today and, below, in the prisoners' time

The meals were served in the kantine, which is one of two of the huts that English Heritage spent £500,000 stabilising ten years ago. The huts were designed to last only five years, 15 at a push, so that any of them should have survived in any condition for 80 years out in the wilds of Weardale is remarkable.

Fake curtains and a lovely drawing of foxes in the kantineThe kantine still has the fake curtains that the prisoners made out of wood to give the spartan windows a more homely feel and, most precious of all, it still has delicate drawings on the wall of bucolic scenes: two foals nuzzling each other, a Tyrolean goat herd playing his pipe while his animals frolic at his feet, or a river valley scene that has been identified as the Lorelei with the Rhine running through it.

Artwork on a fibreboard in the kantine: a Tyrolean goatherd playing to his animals. Below: A couple of nuzzling foals - a far cry from the horrors of war

The peaceful pictures are a far cry from the horrors of war that the prisoners must have recently experienced, and they seem to be done by one talented hand – perhaps the initials MR are a clue to his identity.

The other stabilised hut is Harperley’s other jewel: the theatre.

In the Harperley theatre, looking at the stage with the orchestra pit in frontIt was a regulation hut the prisoners converted. They built a stage at one end, with a makeshift proscenium arch featuring the two theatrical masks of comedy and tragedy. In front of the stage they dug an orchestra pit into which up 12 musicians could squeeze, and they used the soil to bank up the seating into tiers so that everybody got a good view.

The raised seating in the theatre built by prisonersThe walls were decorated with hessian sacking painted in burgundy and gold.

The camp orchestra was led by a chap called Enz, who also edited the camp newspaper, and the prisoners wrote and performed their own plays, including playing all the female parts in extravagant drag. The shows were mainly for an internal audience, but dales people were at times invited.

A German PoW treads the boards at Harperley. As there were no women in the camp, female parts had to be played by the men“We are hoping to put on a production this summer,” says Dr Heather Laurence, a mental health practitioner who is leading the tours. “We have nearly finished the script about life in wartime, and we’d be like to hear from people who would be interested in being involved in this community project.”

There was plenty to keep the prisoners occupied beyond the theatre. There were gardens throughout the camp, and in the kantine they wrote letters, read newspapers, played chess and dominoes and learned lessons. There were lectures and classes in English, physics, Latin and Russian, some taught by inmates and some by outsiders.

A souvenir of Harperley, made by a prisonerThey also made toys and ornaments, usually out of wood or leather. Most were given as gifts to the people on whose farms they worked, although one British officer commissioned a large doll’s house as a Christmas present for his daughter.

Prisoners outside Durham cathedral - spot the famous knocker in the background - with some of the toys they had madeThe prisoners played football on a field beside the camp. Most matches were internal affairs, or against the prisoners held at the satellite camp at Windlestone Hall, but there was a derby against Haltwhistle PoW camp, whose captain was a Luftwaffe colonel who spoke perfect English as he had been at Oxford University before the war.

It is said that the first peacetime international fixture was a friendly between German PoWs and Crook Town, played soon after VE Day.

One of the huts was used for medical purposes, with prisoners being treated by a German doctor who had been captured after his ship sank in the Bay of Biscay.

Fritz Englich, a dentist from Berlin, looked after prisoners’ teeth, but was so gentle with his pedal drill that British soldiers went to him for treatment.

The prisoners were overseen by a score or more of soldiers whose huts were outside the barbed perimeter fence. They had a couple of dormitory huts and a couple of mess huts, one of which was well supplied by the West Auckland Brewery and had entertainment provided by the prisoners’ band.

The stabilised kantine hut, where the prisoners relaxed after a day's work in the Durham fieldsThe first commandant was Major Tetlow, of Wolsingham, who was succeeded by Lieutenant-Colonel George Stobart, of Helme Park, in 1945. The lieutenant-colonel had served for several decades with the Durham Light Infantry in Uganda and India, but injuries forced him home and he took charge of the camp.

He was keen on educating the prisoners, and encouraged their theatrical performances – even with the wartime restrictions, he somehow acquired them gold paint for the walls.

Perhaps because of this enlightened regime, relations between the captors and the captives were cordial.

Often very cordial.

One German managed to break into the commandant’s office and use his phone to arrange a rendezvous, beneath a prominent gable end in Wolsingham, with a local girl he had met on a farm. He was rumbled, though, and two British soldiers followed him and arrested him when his defences were down as he was engaged in an amorous clinch with the girl beneath the gable.

Inside a Harperley hut where 48 men used to sleep on double bunks. Below: A Harperley hut dressed up for Christmas 1946 when the Germans were hoping to be repatriated. After they left, it became a Displaced Persons camp with people from newly-Communist eastern Europe living there until 1951 when it was abandonned

Probably several score of Germans stayed in the North-East when they were released after the war ended, many of them getting married. One, Rudi Lux, was conscripted into the German army on his 16th birthday and served just six weeks before being captured by the Americans and ending up at Harperley. He settled in Northumbria, raised a family and when he died in 2004, his ashes were placed beneath a Peace rose in the camp.

Former PoW Rudi Lux at Harperley shortly before he died in 2004. His ashes were buried beneath a Peace rose tree in the grounds. Below: Rudi Lux, left, with his friend Gunther in 1945 at Harperley. Prisoners wore British uniforms with a coloured patch, either circular or diamond, on the back

James McLeod, and his wife, Lisa, bought the camp, and the surrounding farm, in 2001 when there was still a steady trickle of ex-prisoners returning to reminisce. With the war now 80 years away, that trickle has dried up.

Having lived on the other side of the dale, James and Lisa bought the land when Charlie Johnson died. The camp had been built on his land, and in 1951 when the War Ministry offered to demolish it and restore the land, he declined – being a canny farmer, he saw the value in retaining what might be useful out-buildings.

The Harperley camp, by Sarah CaldecottThe 400,000 German wartime prisoners were held in 1,500 camps, of which 100 were purpose built, like Harperley, but very few – perhaps none – survive so intact.

“We think it is the only PoW camp in England and the only one in the world with a purpose-built theatre, orchestra pit and stage,” says James, who spends eight hours each week cutting the grass around the huts. “We’ve got Kynren, Beamish, Hadrian’s Wall and Durham Cathedral, and this is just as unique in its own way.

“We could let it fall to the ground but we don’t want 49 piles of rubble, so it needs something to happen to it. We don’t know what, but we’d love the theatre to come back to life, and we’d love to get the local community and the German people involved.”

The chapel hut was striped when the camp was abandoned and is now emptyIt would be hugely expensive to turn Camp 93 into a fully fledged visitor attraction, and it would be very dangerous to both humans and huts to allow people to walk unsupervised through the decaying, although atmospheric, camp as it stands. So to test the water on the 80th anniversary of the ending of the war, Heather and Peter are holding guided walks this weekend followed by a photography evening.

Those dates are already full, but to find out more about future events, follow the Harperley POW Camp 93 on Facebook, call 07578 325114, or email focusonthene@gmail.com

• Do you have any connections with the camp? Are you descended from a prisoner, or do you have any of their toys or ornaments? Please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk if you can tell us any more.

Harperley prisoners of war at the camp

The hidden huts of Harperley