The Depot for Prisoners of War at Norman Cross, Huntingdonshire. 1796 to 1816. Thomas James Walker
custody of 1,840 prisoners, was ready for their reception. On the day before this report was sent, a portion of the military barracks had been occupied by the small number of troops considered sufficient for the moment. These marched in on the 24th, and were ready to mount guard over the expected prisoners.
The work of building went rapidly on during the rest of the year, and nine months from its commencement Mr. Craig, a principal architect of the department, was sent down for the final inspection. As will be seen by the footnote, page 14, payments to W. Adams, Chief Carpenter, went on up to 29th November 1797, when we may assume that the prison in its first form was complete.
From the time of its occupation, this prison was, like others of its class, known as a “depot”—“The Norman Cross Depot for Prisoners of War.” Locally it was frequently spoken of and written about as the Norman Cross Prison, or the Norman Cross Barracks, or even Yaxley or Stilton Barracks. The term depot included the prison proper, the barracks, and all other Government buildings. In the succeeding chapter this Depot is fully described, and its necessary establishment touched upon. 11
CHAPTER II
THE PRISON AND ITS ESTABLISHMENT
It is no flattery to a prisoner to gild his dungeon.
The following description of the Depot is founded on personal observations of the site, on contemporary plans and records, of greater or less accuracy, on the meagre information which could be obtained from the few old people who had in their early days seen and known the place, and who were still alive in 1894, when the materials for the lecture on which this narrative is based were collected, and on facts recorded by recent writers the accuracy of which can be verified.
The site of the Depot was a space of forty-two acres, situated in the angle formed where, seventy-six miles from London, “the Great North Road” is joined, five miles from Peterborough by the old Coach Road from Boston and East Lincolnshire.
The ground rises here, by a rapid slope from the south and east, to a height of 120 feet above the level of the adjoining Fens, and it was in this elevated and healthy spot that the prison and barracks were built. It had been ascertained that by sinking deep wells an abundant supply of good water could be obtained, and it is said that there were about thirty such wells, although in the best extant plan of the Depot nineteen only are shown. Some of these are still in use at the present day, and each well is nearly 100 feet deep. Great attention was paid to the sanitary arrangements, a very necessary matter, when one considers that it was resolved suddenly to concentrate in one spot a population (including prisoners and garrison) of nearly 8,000 adult males, who were to live for several years on about forty acres of ground. There is a legend that the site is even now honeycombed with sewers, and that within recent years a ferret turned into one of them, which had been accidentally opened, at once took out 150 yards of line. This, like many other traditions, is not, I believe, founded on fact. The main feature of the sanitary arrangements was that all refuse should be removed in soil carts, without the intervention of drains, cess-pools, or middens. For further information on this and many other matters connected with the structure of the Depot, the reader may study the Report of a Survey by Mr. Fearnall in 1813. It is evident from this report that the maintenance and repair of the buildings had been greatly neglected during the seventeen years which had elapsed between their erection and the date of the report. 12
The Peterborough Natural History Society, which has in its museum the finest collection in Great Britain, if not in the world, of straw marquetry work, bone carving, and other artistic manufactures executed by the French prisoners, possesses three plans of the prison. The earliest of these is a pictorial plan (Plate II., Fig. 1, Plan A), which was bought at a sale at Washingley Hall, and which I therefore call the Washingley Plan. It was presented in 1906 by the Mayor, T. Lamplugh, Esq.; it is an east elevation. Another (Plate II., Fig. 2, Plan B) of about the same date is a ground plan, and was presented by Miss Hill, the daughter of the late Mr. John Hill. This is taken from the west. Mr. Hill, who was born in 1803, and was thus only thirteen when the prison was demolished, was said to have drawn the plan himself; if he did so, it must have been copied from one made a few years before he was born, as the plan is that of the Depot in the first period of the war, which came to a close in March 1802.
Both these plans are of a very early date in the history of the prison. A third (Plate II., Fig. 3, Plan C) is that which belonged to Major Kelly, who, as Captain Kelly, was Brigade-Major at the time when the prison was closed; this includes a pictorial plan, or bird’s-eye view, with the Peterborough Road on the south to the left hand and the North Road above, a ground plan, and above this the north elevation of the whole group of buildings. It is of later date, probably about 1803–4, the commencement of the second period of the war. A fourth plan (Plate II., Fig. 4, Plan D) was made by Lieut. Macgregor of the West Kent Militia, and dedicated to the officers of his regiment which was quartered at Norman Cross in 1813. This was engraved and published by Sylvester of the Strand. An almost perfect copy of the print is in the possession of the Reverend Father Robert A. Davis; it shows the Depot in its final state two years before Waterloo and three years before it was demolished.
In the Musée de l’Armée at the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris, is a model of the Depot, the work of a French prisoner named Foulley, who was confined at Norman Cross five years and three months. M. Foulley constructed the model after his return to France. It represents the prison as it appeared on the occasion of the rejoicings at the departure of the first detachment of prisoners to France after the entry of the allied armies into Paris, and the abdication of Buonaparte in 1814. By the courtesy of General Niox, the Director of the Museum, and of his Adjutant, Lieut. Sculfort, a photograph of the model has been taken for me; this is reproduced at page 251, chapter xii., where the final clearing of the prison is described. The model corresponds in its main features with the plans which I have enumerated. It is on a large scale, beautifully executed, and its production must have required months of hard work. It is the only plan, or model, which shows a prisoners’ theatre in the centre of the south-east quadrangle.
M. Foulley’s model is incorrect in certain details. It represents the prison wall as quadrilateral inclosing a square, instead of an octagonal space. It omits the large and deep embrasures, in the recesses of which each of the four gates of the prison stood. The wide fosse which encircled the prison at the foot of and within the wall is omitted, nor is there a sufficient space left between the wall and the prison buildings to admit of such a fosse being shown in the model.
Outside the wall of the prison M. Foulley had to rely probably on the description of others, as from within the wall the prisoners could only gaze at its dismal brick surface. Of what was beyond he could have no personal knowledge during the long years of his captivity, unless he was fortunate enough on occasions to be a delegate to the market without the Eastern Gate. Hence probably it arises that the buildings representing the quarters of the military guarding the prison are huddled together, in confused order, which bears no relation to that which was their actual position.
Although the model is not, as a whole, made accurately to scale, the reader will appreciate its size from the fact that the caserns are modelled on a scale of about 1 to 171—the actual length of each casern was 100 feet, the length in the model is nearly 7 inches. A key plan of the model and M. Foulley’s description are given with the photograph in chapter xii., p. 251.
To avoid confusion in following the description, the reader must bear in mind that the Washingley Pictorial Plan, Major Kelly’s plans, and Lieut. Macgregor’s plan are all east elevations—that is, the observer is supposed to face the west, with the Peterborough Road to his left hand—whereas in the plan copied by Mr. Hill the figures and their references are all placed to be read as the observer looks east, with the Peterborough Road on his right hand; therefore the left-hand bottom corner (where the military hospital was situated) in Mr. Hill’s Plan is the right-hand upper corner in the three other plans.
The site was a right-angled oblong, with a small space sliced off at the north-west angle. It measured in its long diameter from east
As illustrating the hardship which, already in its fourth year, this war had imposed upon the nation, the following extract from the report furnished to the Transport Office, by Captain Woodriff, R.N., agent to the Commissioners, of the average price of provisions and the rate of wages in the district in which the Depot had been established, during the time that the prison and barracks were erecting, may be of interest. Mutton was 10½
Appendix A.