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

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 19 s. 6 d. , 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 16 On a range of the stabling purchased in 1816 to be re-erected as farm buildings in a neighbouring village, over one of the doors there stands out in bold relief, owing to the protective influence of the paint, the letters B. A. T., and in the auctioneer’s catalogue the Range is described as Bathorse Stable Range. From Stœqueler’s Military Encyclopædia , we learn that “Bat” signified a pack saddle; “Bathorse,” one which carried a pack; “Batman,” the man in charge of the Bathorse. The latter term came to be used for an officer’s servant, while the Bathorse Stable was applied to a military stable for draught and other horses. 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 17 In his interesting romance, The French Prisoners of Norman Cross , the Rev. Arthur Brown speaks of Mr. Vise as Chief Surgeon at the Prison; this, of course, is an error, the prisoners were not attended by the neighbouring practitioners. The statement that the surgeons were all English is also erroneous. 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 18 Major Kelly was highly esteemed and at the time of his death (when the Indian Mutiny was not yet quelled) the following lines were published in a local newspaper:— A MONODY ON THE LATE MAJOR KELLY Peace to the virtuous brave! Another son of chivalry lies low: Not in the flush of youth he finds a grave, Not stricken to the dust by foreign foe He fainting falls;—but laden with full years, With white-hair’d glory crown’d, he lays him down In earth’s maternal lap, and with him bears Benevolence, high honour, renown, And love-begetting mem’ries, such as throw A halo round the thoughts of mortals here below. Earth! keep thy treasured dead Awhile, in holy trust! Not with vain tears Wail we the loss of him who bravely bled For England’s might and weal, in early years, When life’s warm pulse beat high, and buoyant hopes On tip-toe look’d afar at distant fame; When views of greatness fill’d his vision’s scope, And daring deeds lent glory to a name: Here on our soldier’s grave no tear should fall; All hidden be our grief, as ’neath a funeral pall. O! that in this, our need, This hour of trial, when the swart Sepoy Blurs the fair front of nature, with each deed Of villainy conceiving; when the joy That, like the sun, lights up affection’s eyes, Is blotted out by Indian hate and lust— O! that a host of Kellys could arise, And with avenging steel, unto the dust, Smite down the Smiter, that the world might know How true the Briton as a friend, how mighty as a foe! O. P. The Peterborough Advertiser , 13th February 1858. This monody not only shows the esteem in which the Major was held by the local poet and his neighbours, but in the last stanza it revives the memory of a crisis in the history of the empire, and of the throes of the Indian Mutiny, from which our country was suffering when Major Kelly died. 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 19 Auctioneer’s Catalogue (Peterborough: G. Robertson, Bookseller. 1816!)