The Depot for Prisoners of War at Norman Cross, Huntingdonshire. 1796 to 1816

Above all, wood lent itself to rapidity of construction, which was an urgent and essential requirement at this crisis.

When nine years later, in 1805, fresh accommodation for the ever-increasing number of prisoners flowing into Great Britain was necessary, and Dartmoor was selected as the site for a new prison, granite was the material adopted for its construction.  The stone was obtainable on the spot, while the price of timber was prohibitive, in consequence of the blockading of the Prussian ports. ⁹  The granite prison at Dartmoor, commenced in 1805, received its first batch of prisoners in May 1809.  The stone building took four years to build, it served its original purpose for seven years, stood empty for thirty-four years, and is at the present time, and has been for sixty-one years, a convict prison.  The wooden buildings of Norman Cross, commenced in 1796, were ready for use in four months, served their purpose for eighteen years, and were rased to the ground in 1816.

The earliest official information, as to the plan and the buildings of the Depot, is found in a long report by General Beathand dated 13th January 1797; later official reports and documents, paragraphs in the newspapers, and other sources of information show that the original plans were modified and expanded as the work of the prison progressed.

The timber framework of the building was made in London, and was carted down to Norman Cross, where 500 carpenters and others were employed day and night, and seven days a week, those who would not work on Sunday being discharged.  The erection of the prisons, the accessory offices, and the barracks for the Military Guard progressed very rapidly, and on the 4th February (nine days before the Barrack Master-General applied for the order to start the work!) such progress had been made that the Admiralty instructed Mr. Poore, a surveyor, to proceed to Stilton “to survey the buildings erected near there for the confinement of prisoners of war.”  He did so, and reported that a portion of the building was already complete.  General Nicolls, the officer commanding the district, was sanguine enough to report on the 13th February that the prison at Norman Cross would be ready in about three weeks for the reception of prisoners from the citadel (Plymouth).

This estimate of the date when the barracks would be finished was too sanguine, although the work was being carried out with all possible speed.  By the end of January the sum of £6,000 had been paid to and disbursed by Mr. Adams in wages alone. ¹⁰

The total amount paid on account of the Norman Cross Depot up to the 19th November 1797 being so large, while the large expenditure on the alterations of old prisons and fortresses in the country was going on simultaneously, it is not surprising that on the 14th April 1797 a question was asked by an economist in the House of Commons as to the extraordinary expenditure on barracks; nor, looking to the rate at which the building of the Norman Cross Depot was being pushed forward, can we be surprised at the curt reply of the Secretary of State: “Extraordinary exertions involve extraordinary expenses.”

There is reason to believe, however, that the question was not put without good reason.  The want of method and the overlapping of departments were not conducive to clear statements of accounts.  The action of the newly appointed Transport Board in commencing the building of the prison, while the Barrack Master was refusing to undertake this urgent work because he considered that official routine had been neglected, has already been alluded to.  The Barrack Master’s Accounts were very confused.  In the Records of the Audit Office (Roll 354, Bundle 146, Declared Accounts) the total expenditure by the Barrack Master at Norman Cross, from 1st January 1797 to Christmas 1802, is only £5,175 3s., and it is evident that the sum of £34,518 11s. 3d. does not appear in the Barrack Master’s account.  The total expenditure of his department amounted, when an inquiry was held, in 1802 to £1,324,680 12s. 5d. and there was a deficiency of £40,296 9s. 11¼d.

Out of the confused chaos of figures there emerges the interesting fact that, between the 25th December 1796 and the 24th June 1797, £390 10s. 1d. was spent on coals supplied to the Norman Cross Depot!  A large coal bill for half a year, when we consider that in none of the blocks occupied by the prisoners, excepting the hospital blocks, was there any artificial heat.

As the work went on, there were, as has been already stated, various alterations in the plans; thus in February and March 1797 it was ordered, that a hospital for the sick should be provided by adapting some of the blocks originally intended as prisons to this purpose, and that increased accommodation for prisoners should be obtained by adding a storey to each block in course of erection, in preference to multiplying the buildings.

On 21st March a payment was made to Mr. Poore of £142 2s. for his services in surveying and settling the establishment at Norman Cross.  This shows that within three months from the commencement of the buildings they were in a sufficiently advanced condition to make the consideration of the necessary staff for the administration of the prison when it should be opened, a matter requiring Mr. Poore’s immediate attention.

By the 25th March the staff had been engaged, and on that day it was reported that a section of the buildings, sufficient for the 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.

Calderon, Fortunas de Andromed et Persus.

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 to west 500 yards (1,500 feet)—that is, 60 yards more than a quarter of a mile—while across from north to south it was 412 yards (1,236 feet), or 28 yards short of a quarter of a mile.  The space enclosed was 42 acres, 7 poles, which is about six times the area of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, and about four times that of Trafalgar Square.  To the south it was bounded in its whole length by the Peterborough Road, on its other three sides it was surrounded with fields.  A strip of land (B B in Mr. Hill’s plan), crossed by a wide roadway leading to the West Barracks, and varying in depth from 125 yards at the Norman Cross corner to 40 yards at the north-west corner, intervened between the western boundary of the site and the North Road.  The prison itself occupied 22 acres in the centre of the space.  It was enclosed by an octagonal brick wall.  Originally the structure was a strong stockade fence, but about the year 1805 the fence was replaced by the brick wall, of which 30 yards are still standing.

The two east and two west sides of the octagonal space, which was the prison proper, were longer than the two north and two south sides; the long diameter of the octagon therefore ran across that of the site, extending almost to its north and south limits, while the short diameter stopping short of the boundary by 300 feet, left, east and west, ample room for the barracks of the military garrison and for other buildings.

In the very centre of the site, which is also the centre of the prison, was an octagonal block house, mounted with cannon.  This is represented in the illustration, a photograph of one of several models made by the prisoners.  This model is in the possession of Colonel Strong of Thorpe Hall, by whose grandfather Archdeacon Strong it was bought from its maker at the prison.

The frontispiece is from a sketch of the centre of the prison, by Captain George Lloyd of the Second West York Militia, taken in 1809.  The original is in the collection of the United Service Institution, Whitehall; it shows the accuracy of the model of the block house.  In describing the various courts and buildings, it is best to start from the centre, and to trace the arrangement of the parts of the Depot round this point.  Symmetrically arranged round this block house, and commanded by its guns, were four quadrangular courts, each strongly fenced by a high stockade fence.  The area of each of these courts was about 3½ acres; they were separated from one another by four cross roads, each about twenty feet wide.  These roads met in the centre, where the corners of the quadrangular courts were cut off to form the octagonal open space in which stood the block house.

Each quadrangle contained four wooden two-storied barracks, or caserns, 100 feet long and 22 feet wide, roofed with red tiles, the shallowness of their depth from back to front adding to their apparent height.  The sixteen buildings faced the east, eight with their outer ends to the south fence, and eight with their outer end to the north fence.  The four caserns in each square were placed one behind the other, leaving between each block and the next in front a space which was strongly fenced off at either end, forming an enclosure about 100 by 70 feet, in which the prisoners of each casern were confined when the gates opening into the quadrangle, or airing-ground, were locked at sunset.  Each casern was constructed to form the dwelling-place of about 500 prisoners, who slept in rows of hammocks, closely packed in tiers one above the other.  It is almost certain that each of the two floors in these caserns was divided by partitions into three chambers, as at the sale each of the sixteen was sold in three lots—the north end, the centre, and the south end.  The north end of the hinder block in the north-east quadrangle was bought on the 25th September 1816 by Mr. Dan Ruddle for £32. ¹³  He re-erected it for workshops in his building-yard, where it still stands, and it is thus possible to-day, to look upon the north end of the casern (No. 13, or letter M), which stood behind the three blocks adapted for the prisoners’ hospital, and which in the second period of the war ¹⁴ was occupied by the French petty officers and by civilians who were captured, and whose position did not entitle them to parole.

In the south-east quadrangle, which was on the right of the central south entrance to the prison from the Peterborough Road, there were, in addition to these four caserns and their necessary offices, the superintendent’s, or agent’s offices, a storehouse, a room set apart for the clerks and other officials, a cooking-house, and, as in each of the other quadrangles, two turnkeys’ lodges.

These smaller buildings in each quadrangle were in a court, cut off from the large space which formed the prisoners’ airing-ground by stockade fencing similar to that surrounding the whole quadrangle, the turnkeys’ lodges being immediately behind this fence.  The only exit from the part of the quadrangle occupied by the prisoners was through this court, the gate situated in the inner stockade fence being between the two turnkeys’ lodges, facing another in the main fence of the square, which opened into the road between the quadrangles.  There were in each quadrangle three wells, two in the airing-courts near the caserns, and one in the enclosed space in which were the accessory buildings.

In the south-western quadrangle, in addition to the caserns, the storehouse, and the cooking-house, there was a straw barn, from which, whenever necessary, fresh straw was served out for the prisoners’ palliasses.  In the enclosed court near the turnkeys’ lodges was the black hole, where prisoners were confined for gross offences.  This den of misery contained twelve cells, each secured by bars and padlocks, and had a cramped strongly fenced airing-court in front of it.

The north-eastern quadrangle was mainly given up to the hospital.  Of the four caserns in the early years of the Depot, two, but later three, were fitted up for the reception of the sick and wounded and for the accommodation of the surgeon and assistant surgeons, the matron sempstress and the hospital attendants.  Of the hospital blocks, one was set apart for the officers and other prisoners of similar social status.  In the enclosed court behind the turnkeys’ lodges were the special accessory buildings of the hospital, and in the corner behind the caserns was the mortuary, where, between their death and their burial, were laid the bodies of 1,770 unhappy men whose fate it was to end their captivity in a foreign grave.

In this quadrangle, as shown in Lieut. Macgregor’s plan, was, in the year 1805, erected the surgeon’s house, which was a substantial brick building, with an enclosed garden; this was built in the second period of the war after the Peace of Amiens, about eleven years before the demolition of the barracks.  After the closing of the Depot, when peace was declared in 1814, we find Mr. George Walker the surgeon, on vacating his post, making application for permission to remove the young fruit trees which he had planted in the apparently newly laid-out garden. ¹⁵  In each quadrangle a space of about two acres was unoccupied by buildings, and constituted the airing-ground, in which the prisoners spent the greater part of their waking lives.  This outdoor life, from sunrise to sunset, except in bad weather, was enforced by the Prison Regulations.

These airing-courts were bordered by a flag pavement, which enabled the prisoners to use them in any but the worst weather.

Completely surrounding the four quadrangles, and enclosing around them a vacant space, varying in width from 25 to 30 yards opposite the cross roads, to as many feet at the abutting angles of each quadrangle, was the prison wall.  This in the earlier years was a strong stockade fence, and is so represented in the three earlier plans reproduced in the plates; but at a later date it was replaced by the brick wall shown in Macgregor’s plan, and it is described in the auctioneer’s catalogue of the sale, when the prison and its contents were disposed of in September 1816, as “a substantial brick wall measuring 3,740 feet round, and containing 282 rods of brickwork more or less.”  Of this wall, 30 yards are still standing, forming a portion of the garden wall of the house originally occupied by the superintendent.  The auctioneer’s description does not altogether agree with that of the surveyor Mr. Fearnall, who in 1813 reported that it was “very indifferently built, and not of the best materials,” and that much of it was in danger of falling, owing to the excavation at its foot within the enclosure of a ditch.  This ditch, for its full length of nearly three-quarters of a mile, can be traced at the present day, with the deep embrasures shown in the plans, at each of the four prison gates.  It was, at the time the buildings were demolished, about 9 yards wide and 5 feet deep, and it was paved with stone flags; this is supposed to be the “silent walk” of the sentries, excavated in 1809.  An item in the barrack master’s accounts for July in that year is £420 19s. 6d., for the making a walk for the “silent sentries.”  The area of the actual prison enclosed within the wall was in 1816 sold in one lot, and 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.