PoW camps

[Gillg]

Did you know that there were over 1000 WW2 prisoner of war camps in the UK?  It's interesting to see where they were located from this article from the Guardian and Lost Cousins

https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/nov/08/prisoner-of-war-camps-uk#data

I only knew of one, the one in Grizedale Forest in the Lake District - see the 1957 film with Hardy Kruger as "The one that got away". https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050803/   You can watch the trailer if you scroll down that page.

[BillyF]

I was aware that there were a lot in the UK.

Through work I met someone who had been in one near Brigg Lincolnshire. He said that he didn`t return to Germany as he "didn`t want to live under the communists" !!

There was another one near to where we used to live ,also in Lincs,  but that was for Italians.

The therer was one in South Wales where I believe  75 men absconded, although most (if not all) were recaptured.

[AntonyMMM]

There was one for Italians near where I was brought up in Lancashire. They were put to work on farms in the area and quite a few decided to stay after the war and married locally. A boy I was at school with was the son of one of the POWs.

[BumbleB]

What is now Oulton Park Racetrack in Cheshire was a PoW camp - Italians and German, who were sent out to work on the farms. 

[tomm]

There was a PoW camp on Wormwood scrubs...

This had Italians and German PoW's at the start and then German PoW's at the end of the war.

[Rena]

There was one for Italians near where I was brought up in Lancashire. They were put to work on farms in the area and quite a few decided to stay after the war and married locally. A boy I was at school with was the son of one of the POWs.

Same situation in East Riding of Yorkshire.  The Italian POWs were given the opportunity to work on the local farms.

i think everyone knew that the Italians didn't want to fight for Mussolini.

there was a story going around when I was young that around ten thousand Italian soldiers surrendered to a couple of British soldiers.

[KGarrad]

Doesn't include Internment Camps?
There were 9 of these in WW2 Isle of Man.

[ALAMO2008]

My Granddad was a Guard in WW2 at Prees Heath POW Camp Whitchurch for several years then moved to Glenn Mill POW Camp Oldham in 1943

https://www.lancashireatwar.co.uk/glenmill

[Gillg]

As a former resident of a Lancashire mill town I find it interesting that several mills were used as PoW camps.  They must have been in the centre of town, so difficult to control, but maybe the PoWs became operatives in the mills rather than farm workers.