Prisoner of War Camp

Aerial photographs of land situated about 400 metres south-west of Hopton Farm and directly opposite Broom Covert reveal a number of bases, each approximately measuring eleven metres by five metres.  Whilst six can be clearly seen (as on this photograph), there is some indication that others may be obscured by vegetation.  A central track between the two rows of bases can also be detected. No mapping sources or written evidence of this camp are known, so what exactly was built on these bases and for what purpose have been a matter of conjecture.  Local anecdotal evidence suggests that the site was a Second World War prisoner-of-war camp used to house those working on local farms.  An alternative suggestion is that the site housed a local Women’s Land Army unit. In WW2 the large POW base camps used the ten-bay Ministry of War Production huts built of reinforced concrete frames and wall panels and the Laing composite timber-framed huts clad in weather-boarding and lined internally with plaster-board.   The measurements of the Hopton Farm Camp bases are far too small for the standard MoWP and Laing huts.  However, they are compatible with the smallest of the three sizes of Nissen huts which were also used when POWs were billeted on farms. Whilst such huts were used to house members of the Women’s Land Army in the Highlands, the women in the Borders were housed in requisitioned stately homes.  At a meeting of the Roxburghshire Agricultural Executive Committee in February 1943 it was reported that 230 Land Girls were employed in the county accommodated in five hostels.  Ancrum House had just been requisitioned to provide additional accommodation for 70 girls and the intention was to increase the workforce to 500.  By the following June the number had risen to 300 and two further hostels were being prepared. The accommodation policy in Roxburghshire and the proximity of Ancrum House to the Hopton Farm camp site rule out the suggestion that the site was home to a Women’s Land Army unit.

1 Southern Reporter 25/2/1943 page 3, 3/6/1943 page 4 and 8/7/1943 page 4.

Some local oral sources claim that the Hopton site housed German prisoners.  Others are convinced the prisoners were Italians.  In either case, this would indicate that the construction of the camp was late 1942 to mid-1943 at the earliest.  This is because initially, once they had been interrogated and classified according to their political views, the vast majority of German POWs were transported to camps in Canada and the U.S.A.  As their number increased and was heavily augmented by Italian POWs, POW camps became more widely established in Britain from late 1942.  Although a small proportion of German prisoners was placed in POW camps from 1939 to mid-1943, it was only from mid-1943 that huge numbers of Germans and Italians were interned in camps across Scotland. By 1946 around 189,000 prisoners were involved in agricultural work throughout Britain.  Farm work mainly involved harvesting, hedging, ditching and basic construction work.  During their working hours they would be under the direct command of the farmer to whom they were assigned and by whom they were employed. Many camps accommodated different nationalities at different times, and even changed their size and function, and this may have been the case with the Hopton site.  The main camp in the area was at Kelso and known as Sunlaws.  It would seem that the camp’s headquarters was at Sunlaws House2 and Polish soldiers and some POWs billeted at nearby Springwood Park. Sunlaws House was initially the headquarters of locally-based Polish Army units (1942-45), then additionally used to organise placement of Italian POWs (from 1943) and German POWs (from 1945 until 1947).  A former German POW describes Sunlaws as a big camp, consisting of 22 hostels spread over two counties, Roxburghshire and Selkirkshire, and the headquarter was at Sunlaws House.3  All but one ‘hostel’ (just outside Ayton, near Eyemouth) were occupied solely by Italian POWs until later in 1945 when Italians were repatriated and German POWs replaced them.  This would indicate that the Hopton Farm site was under the ultimate supervision of Sunlaws and at separate times housed Italians and Germans.

In December 1941 the Southern Reporter makes reference to a forestry worker who was Polish and living at Bloomfield Camp, Ancrum.  There is evidence of many Polish refugees as well as evacuated Polish soldiers in the area and the proximity of Bloomfield to Hopton Farm raises the question as to whether the Hopton Farm site was originally used as living accommodation for Polish refugees who worked as forestry or farm workers in the area. Sunlaws House and grounds were requisitioned shortly after the beginning of the War and derequisitioned in 1948.  The property was bought by the Duke of Roxburgh in 1969 and then became Sunlaws House Hotel and later renamed the Roxburghe Hotel.

 Horst Hassold visited all the ‘hostels’ in Roxburghshire and Selkirkshire when working as the Sunlaws camp’s canteen supervisor and then as an interpreter.  He was billeted in an attic room at Sunlaws House from December 1945 until his return to Germany in January 1948.  Southern Reporter 25/12/1941 page 7; see also Hawick News and Border Chronicle 15/1/1940 page 5, 17/1/1941 page 8, 7/2/1941 page 4, 28/2/1941 page 4, 20/6/1941 page 5, 27/6/1941 page 5, 5/9/1941 page 5, 24/10/1941 page 3, 1/5/1942 page 5, 13/11/1942 page 5 and 8/10/1943 page 4;  Southern Reporter 16/10/1941 page 5 and 15/1/1942 page 5.