Explore Featherstone Park’s WWII Prisoner of War Camp Remains

Near Featherstone Castle, you can find old camp remains. This site is on the Daft as a Brush Tyne Trail. The POW camp is by the South Tyne river. Its original layout mostly remains intact, though some parts have collapsed into the river. The River Tyne Trail goes through the camp.

You can see different structures, now used by cows and sheep for shelter from the weather. Some remaining buildings look large and have a striking style. It opened in 1944 for American soldiers before the Normandy invasions. Italian and German POWs later used it.

The camp closed in the summer of 1948, and contents got sold in 1950. The camp held senior German officers, including Nazi SS officers. Those officers had to do a “denazification” course before their release back home. People considered it successful.

Camp 18 covers a mile of Featherstone Park. It ranked as one of Britain’s largest camps. It once housed 4,000 German officers and 600 orderlies. Approaching from Featherstone Castle, a memorial stone marks the site’s old entrance.

A plaque marks the former entrance and tells of German officers held there from 1945-48. Captain Herbert Sulzbach was an interpreter who worked hard for British-German reconciliation. The Featherstone Park Association honored him.

Camp 18 consisted of several parts. It had a guard’s compound and two prisoner compounds. A sports field sat on the grounds. Life at Camp 18 was often good.

Prisoners worked in local communities, sometimes assisting on nearby farms. Academics lectured them from Newcastle, Durham and Oxford. The buildings held many things including a bakery. A theatre hosted shows, and a library had books to read.

A chapel held church services, and a classroom supported education. Three orchestras played music too. Prisoners could attend village dances on Saturday nights. A newspaper ran from June 1946 to March 1948 called Die Zeit am Tyne.

The paper gives insight into POW life and remains an uncensored resource. Archives show one escape attempt. Eight prisoners tried to escape in total. One died crossing the flooded river, while seven followed the railway to Alston.

They traveled twelve hard miles that day, but all were eventually captured. The former POW camp holds rich history. It is a unique survival from World War II, making the camp worth a visit.