Overlooked Britain: Italian Chapel in the Orkneys

Overlooked Britain The Renaissance comes to Orkney

lucinda lambton During the War, Italian prisoners of war built an enchanting chapel on Lamb Holm in the Orkney Islands

Just north of Wells, in Somerset, by the road to Midsomer Norton, you spot a most curious neoclassical monument.

Perched high on a podium are Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome, suckling the she-wolf who mythically reared them.

Only when you peer at them closely and spot corroding iron protruding from their partly collapsed cement do you realise they are in fact relatively new – sculpted by Italian prisoners in the Second World War.

Among them was Gaetano Celestra, who created them in gratitude for the happy times he spent working on a farm in this Somerset countryside.

Here, sandwiched in the midst of a dual carriageway, it is an oddly intoxicating sight. The land was owned by Mr Wilstead Wright, delighted that the Italians were so happy to be here. They had been treated so poorly in other counties that they were

pleased to be thought of as human beings again.

At Lamb Holm on Orkney, several hundred Italian prisoners were imprisoned after being captured during the North African Campaign in the Second World War. Here they created a chapel, while they also built the concrete causeways to defend Scapa Flow.

With its statue of St George nearby, this modest building is the last reminder of the men who lived there. They were in a particularly grim collection of huts, known as Camp 60.

A theatre was created, complete with painted scenery, and there was an area reserved for recreation for which they built a concrete billiard table. The top-notch centrepiece was and still is their chapel, built for the Catholic occupants of Camp 60. Here it stands, bold as brass, surrounded by a wealth of handmade masterpieces of frescoes and paintwork galore.

Domenico Chiocchetti, a prisoner described as having ‘great artistic sensibility’, painted imaginative works on the sanctuary vault, with a whopping and elaborately conceived ‘stone’ dado on the curved ceiling. A tabernacle was carved from wood taken from a wrecked ship.

The interior was painted to imitate carved stone. Another prisoner fashioned an intricate Gothic screen and gate from wrought iron.

At Norman Cross, near Peterborough, hard by the A1, there was – and still is – another prisoner-of-war camp.

In 1797, it was the first in the world to be purpose-built for the ever-increasing number of European captives (mostly French) from the Napoleonic Wars.

The Governor’s House is still intact to this day, as is the short stretch of the perimeter wall.

A bronze eagle has been restored, to perch on a pillar. This was stolen but now – hurray! – has been replaced, with all the pomp of a priestly gathering.

Within the haven of the Peterborough Museum is the camp’s shining white castle, made from bones from the cookhouse, polished and painted to seem like ivory.

There are 600 similar artefacts. Soldiers made from bones can be turned on a wheel so as to march on the ramparts. There is a ballroom filled with revellers who can be made to dance. A carpenter planes his wood, and a lady plies her pestle and mortar.

The prisoners also made little guillotines out of their mutton bones. Fantastically complex in their

Jane of the Daily Mirror at Island Farm German POW camp, Bridgend, Wales

construction, manned by armies of uniformed soldiers, these were all gruesomely workable, with the heads of the aristocrats made of putty so that they could be used over and over again.

The workmanship is of the highest quality; the French prisoners produced such refinements as ‘Neptune’s Kingdom’ – an intricately carved assembly of creatures which also seem to be fashioned from the finest ivory.

An escritoire of straw marquetry is as stylish as if inlaid with the richest woods. A straw picture of Peterborough Cathedral is flawless, with every nuance of light and shade dancing through its Gothic detailing. What glories!

Most of the First and Second World War camps have disappeared – with few regrets – but the Island Farm German POW camp, near Bridgend, South Wales, survives. Here, in 30 somewhat grim buildings, German prisoners of war were housed between 1944 and 1948.

A preservation order has been put on an escape tunnel. On 11th March 1945, dozens of men got away. The 67th escapee was spotted with white kitbag and was shot in the shoulder. Working behind a false wall in the hut, the men dug a tunnel under the perimeter fence and, wonder of wonders, the tunnel is still there today. Some 45 feet long, it was excavated with hands, cans and knives. The prisoners were always naked as they dug, so as not to have telltale earth on their clothes.

All were caught: the first ones out were the last to be recaptured – rugbytackled to the ground by a Welsh farmer. In the absence of a police station, they were marched off to the local post office for a genial tea with the postmistress.

Most imaginatively, Cadw – the Welsh historic monuments agency – has listed the hut as a Grade-II building, along with the tunnel.

Fragments of walls from other Island Farm huts on which pin-ups were painted have also been saved, as haunting reminders of camp life and the glamorous companions which they created to cheer them on each day.

In 1946, no fewer than 127 German generals and field marshals were dispatched to Bridgend. Most notable among them were Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, Chief of the German Army in the West, and General Karl Wolff, Himmler’s Chief of Staff.

When one group of German officers arrived at the local station, they refused to carry their cases the two miles to the local camp. It was only with the appearance of Mr Hill the stationmaster, resplendent in his uniform of long frock coat and gold braid, that the officers – thinking that they had been given orders by a general – finally obliged!

There is one more glory, and it is one that takes you on a happy stroll down memory lane. The existence of Jane of the Daily Mirror is still safe and sound at Bridgend.

Here we have the aluminium cigarette case with one side showing her clothed, the other naked – as it was promised she would be when the war was won!