UK’s lost prison town with 7,000 people that disappeared

South of a regular English provincial town is a site that once played a crucial role on the home front of one of Europe’s defining conflicts.

Norman Cross near Peterborough, though, was a prison active during the Napoleonic Wars at the beginning of what is known by historians as the long 19th century.

But it didn’t just consist of buildings in which inmates were house, it functioned as a town in its own right, complete with houses, offices, butchers, bakers, a hospital, school, market and banking system.

Constructed in 1797, it had a capacity of nearly 7,000.

Today, some remnants of the structure can still be seen.

In fields are “lumps and bumps”, Peterborough Archaeology says, as well as a memorial to 1,770 prisoners who died there.

The prison was closed in 1814.

Historic England says that, in 1816, its buildings were demolished and the site was sold. The area is now under pasture.

Norman Cross was the world’s first specially-constructed prisoner of war camp and the “prototype for the future development of military prisons”.

Experts add that the camp has yielded the “largest and finest collection of prisoner of war craftwork in the world”, including a collection of carved bone and ivory objects.

Exhibits such as model ships, guillotines, needlework boxes and playing cards, along with pieces of straw marquetry, more than 800 items in total, are now held at Peterborough Museum.

The site’s function was to “ensure short-term security”.

Historic England adds in the prison’s listing: “British successes in the military and naval conflicts of the Napoleonic wars, combined with the refusal by the French to exchange prisoners as regularly as had previously been the case, created an unprecedented number of captives.

“Although officers could be let out on parole, a new strategy had to be developed to house the large number of soldiers and sailors that had been detained.

“From initial hostilities in 1793, prisoners were shipped back to Britain and held in rapidly adapted military buildings.”