The Depot for Prisoners of War at Norman Cross, Huntingdonshire. 1796 to 1816. Thomas James Walker
is described in the catalogue as “containing by admeasurement 22 acres, 2 roods, and 14 perches more or less.”
In the boundary wall were four gates, opening on to the ends of the cross streets, which separated the four quadrangles. The north gate opened into a space at the back of the prison occupied by sheds and other accessories; the east and west gates on roadways which ran between the military barracks and the prison from the Peterborough Road; the south gate was opposite the central main entrance from that road into the Depot. Later, as shown in Macgregor’s plan, there were, in addition to these four large gates, a door in the south wall adjoining the house of the agent, or superintendent, and another in the north wall, giving admission to a court outside the wall, in which had been erected a separate prison for the boys.
At each gate outside the prison wall was a guard house, a one-storied building fitted with separate rooms for the officers and men of the guard, with cells for prisoners, and with a wide-open shelter, or verandah, in front.
The ground between the boundary wall and the quadrangles was not built upon, but was studded over with the boxes of the sentries, who, with muskets loaded with ball cartridge, day and night patrolled the vacant area, ready to fire on any prisoner attempting to escape across it who did not obey the order to halt.
Beyond the boundary wall of the prison were situated east and west the military barracks. These comprised at each end three large caserns, similar to those in the prison, built to enclose, with the guard house, the barrack square. The casern facing the guard house was the officers’ quarters, and was partitioned off into twenty-three separate officers’ rooms, a mess-room, kitchen, and other offices. Those at either side accommodated the private soldiers; they were divided into ten separate rooms, each with sleeping-berths for sixty men. There were two smaller buildings for the non-commissioned officers, a large canteen, sutling-house, and various offices. The whole of these buildings, with the barrack yards, were enclosed by strong stockade fencing. Outside this fence there was, in the space allotted to the accommodation of the troops, east and west of the prison, a detached house for the field officers, two smaller houses for the staff sergeants, the powder magazine, a fire-engine house, a range of stabling, with stalls for thirty-five horses, 16 rooms for the batmen, a schoolroom, and various other necessary offices and sheds.
The Military Hospital occupied the north-west corner of the forty-two acres; it served for the whole of the troops in both barracks, and was complete in itself. It was enclosed within a separate stockade fence.
On the south side of the area, between the boundary wall and the Peterborough Road, were the houses of the barrack master, and of the agent (or superintendent). These are still standing, the former having been purchased, when the prison and barracks were demolished and the site and materials sold, by Captain Kelly (Brevet Major, 1854), the last Brigade-Major. This officer had, in 1814, married the daughter of Mr. Vise, a surgeon practising in Stilton, 17 and, wishing to settle in the neighbourhood, he purchased the first of the lots into which the freehold was divided, and in which was situated the barrack master’s house, described in the catalogue as “a comfortable house in the cottage stile,” “built of substantial fir carcase-framing and rough weather-boarding on brick footings, and covered with pantiles.”
To this house Major Kelly made considerable additions. It was occupied by him for forty years. He died, aged seventy-eight, in 1858. 18 His son Captain J. Kelly succeeded him, and the property has now passed into the hands of Mr. J. A. Herbert, J.P., the present occupant of the house. It is a useful landmark to those who visit the locality, as with its grounds it occupies the south-east corner of the forty-two acres, which were covered by the prison and barracks, and it forms a useful point from which to start in an attempt to conjure up the Depot as it was at the beginning of the last century. The first effort of the imagination must be to blot out the charming residence with its well-wooded grounds, and to substitute the bare, treeless (except for one old ash) spot on which stood the “comfortable house in the cottage stile, consisting of one room 20 ft. by 12 ft. 2 in., one ditto 14 ft. 8 in. by 12 ft. 3 in. . . . built of substantial fir carcase-framing and rough weather-boarding on brick footings, and covered with pantiles”—which was what Captain Kelly bought in 1816. 19
Immediately to the west of the barrack master’s house was the straw barn and yard, in which was stored the straw for the beds of the soldiers. Beyond the barn was a gate, from which a road or street ran across between the prison proper and the east barracks. Through this gate passed all those who came to attend the market at the east gate of the prison, or on other business. Beyond this gate was the house of the superintendent, or agent, who was practically the governor of the prison. The block contained two houses, the second being occupied by other officials. These houses, like the barrack master’s, remain at the present time where they stood in the twenty years of the prison’s existence, but they have been much altered, and are now surrounded by trees and shrubs, of which the ground was absolutely bare in the days of the prison.
The superintendent’s and the adjoining house were cased with brick in 1816 by the purchaser, Captain Handslip, and were thrown into one house, which is now occupied by Mr. Franey. In the catalogue of the sale they are described as “two excellent contiguous dwelling-houses, built of substantial fir carcase-framing, and stuccoed, with lead flat top.” Another range of buildings, 100 feet long, “comprising a large storeroom, coach-house, stable, etc.,” also stood on this south side between the prison wall and the road, while in the centre was the main entrance, with, beyond and to the west of the gate, the south guard house.
On the ground plan are shown four entrances to the depot—three from the Peterborough Road, the centre entrance just mentioned, and two others, one at either end, the roads from which ran between the barracks and the prison. The fourth entrance was approached from the North Road by a broad drive, crossing the narrow field lying between the prison and the Great North Road, from which it is now, as then, fenced off on either side. This entrance was exactly opposite the centre of the Western Military Barracks, the main guard facing it. It was by this western entrance that the stores and provisions were daily brought into the prison, 20 and through it the bodies of those who died were carried to the prison cemetery on the opposite side of the North Road.
Macgregor’s plan shows a paled fence surrounding the forty-two acres and forming the outer boundary of the whole site, but this may have been a mere artistic finish to the plan.
The prison and barracks were excellently planned, although, as a place of safe custody, the former would have been practically useless without the latter.
The guns of the block house commanding the whole prison, the cordon of sentries frequently changed, always alert, ceaselessly pacing their beats within and without the wall, day and night; the strong guard mounted at each gate of the prison, and the large force of military in the two barracks, ready to act on the slightest alarm, constituted a more efficient safeguard against mutiny or escape than would have been afforded had trust been placed in strong stone structures instead of in the wooden walls and buildings which had been so rapidly run up.
In the summer of 1911, when the heat and drought were exceptional, the stone and rubble footings upon which the wooden buildings were erected were, after the first few showers of rain, in many parts of the site, mapped out clearly in brown on a field of green, the grass upon them having withered, so that it could not spring up fresh as it did in the surrounding pastures. This enabled the author to demonstrate the actual size of the buildings, and to correct many measurements which had been taken from the plans. It also proved that none of the extant plans were drawn to scale.
These are the dry details taken from actual measurements on the ground, from surveyors’ plans, and similar documents, but we have a word-picture of the effect produced by these wooden buildings and their inhabitants on the mind of an imaginative and emotional boy, who afterwards became one of the most picturesque writers of the middle part of the nineteenth century. George Borrow’s father was quartered at Norman Cross in 1812–13, and his little boy, not yet in his teens, was moved from Norwich to this
On a range of the stabling purchased in 1816 to be re-erected as farm buildings in a neighbouring village, over one of the doors there stands out in bold relief, owing to the protective influence of the paint, the letters B. A. T., and in the auctioneer’s catalogue the Range is described as Bathorse Stable Range. From Stœqueler’s
In his interesting romance,
Major Kelly was highly esteemed and at the time of his death (when the Indian Mutiny was not yet quelled) the following lines were published in a local newspaper:—
Peace to the virtuous brave!
Another son of chivalry lies low:
Not in the flush of youth he finds a grave,
Not stricken to the dust by foreign foe
He fainting falls;—but laden with full years,
With white-hair’d glory crown’d, he lays him down
In earth’s maternal lap, and with him bears
Benevolence, high honour, renown,
And love-begetting mem’ries, such as throw
A halo round the thoughts of mortals here below.
Earth! keep thy treasured dead
Awhile, in holy trust! Not with vain tears
Wail we the loss of him who bravely bled
For England’s might and weal, in early years,
When life’s warm pulse beat high, and buoyant hopes
On tip-toe look’d afar at distant fame;
When views of greatness fill’d his vision’s scope,
And daring deeds lent glory to a name:
Here on our soldier’s grave no tear should fall;
All hidden be our grief, as ’neath a funeral pall.
O! that in this, our need,
This hour of trial, when the swart Sepoy
Blurs the fair front of nature, with each deed
Of villainy conceiving; when the joy
That, like the sun, lights up affection’s eyes,
Is blotted out by Indian hate and lust—
O! that a host of Kellys could arise,
And with avenging steel, unto the dust,
Smite down the Smiter, that the world might know
How true the Briton as a friend, how mighty as a foe!
This monody not only shows the esteem in which the Major was held by the local poet and his neighbours, but in the last stanza it revives the memory of a crisis in the history of the empire, and of the throes of the Indian Mutiny, from which our country was suffering when Major Kelly died.
The most valuable direct evidence as to the appearance of the barracks and prison which I was able to obtain in 1891, was from an old Mr. Lewin of Yaxley, who was born in 1802, and had been very familiar with the Depot in his childhood. He used frequently to ride in through this west gate in the tradesmen’s carts, but he spoke always of the entrance on the south front as the main entrance. This old gentleman’s memory was wonderfully clear, and his accounts I regarded as thoroughly trustworthy.