When I posted the USAAF photograph of Market Harborough in 1943 or 1944, one of the features I singled out was the prisoner of war camp in Farndon Road.
I was down there this morning, and I'm pretty sure that this long since fenced off turning on to Farndon Road was once one of the entrances to that camp.
There's lots of information about the camp on the East Farndon website, including friendships between German prisoners and local families that lasted long after the war.
I'm used to seeing pictures of village children with Italian prisoners of war, but it's a pleasant surprise to read these accounts about German prisoners. Makes you proud to be British - the only sad thing is that The Bell at East Farndon closed years ago.
I've stolen the map below from that site. It shows the camp and also the cinder track in Welland Park I blogged about recently.
I wonder if the overgrown entrance I photographed today is where the children from the home in East Farndon stopped to talk to the prisoners through the wire on their way to the pictures in Market Harborough?
2 comments:
One of the documents on the East Farndon website shews a Lt Col J Jolliffe MBE MC MM as the Commandant. I wonder if he was any relation to Hylton Jolliffe, who was a government whip in the Lords under Asquith, Lloyd George, Bonar Law, and Baldwin.
If you google "John James Jolliffe Manchester Regiment" you will find him. As he was promoted from the ranks during World War I, I suspect that he does not come from such an aristocratic family.
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