The Depot for Prisoners of War at Norman Cross, Huntingdonshire. 1796 to 1816Walker, Thomas (Thomas James)
History
The Depot for Prisoners of War at Norman Cross, Huntingdonshire. 1796 to 1816
Walker, Thomas (Thomas James)
France -- History -- 1789-1815; Norman Cross depot; Prisoners of war
There is nothing now to distinguish the prisoners’ cemetery from the
surrounding fields; it is only by careful observation that the
irregularities of the surface can be recognised as the mounds which mark
the graves, these in the course of a hundred years having become very ill
defined.
The occasional disturbance of the bones of the dead in agricultural
operations, or by irreverent explorations of the graves by the village
lads, alone keep alive in the minds of the rustic population the
knowledge of this burial-place. The burial-places attached to other
depots for prisoners of war have one after the other been distinguished
by a monument erected to the memory of those who lie in them. Too long
has the respect due to the memory of the brave men who fought and
suffered for their country, and died at Norman Cross, been forgotten.
Too long, alike by the nation whose foes these prisoners were and by the
nation whose sons they were, has this God’s Acre, doubly sacred, because
in it lie only patriots who died for their native land, been neglected
and left without a mark to show that it is a sacred spot. Happily the
animosity of a hundred years ago has been replaced by _L’Entente
Cordiale_, and a movement originated by Mr. H. B. Sands, the late
Secretary of the Association which has adopted that title, is even now in
progress, the object of the movement being to acquire a portion of the
ground, to fence it, and to erect upon it, close to the North Road, a
monument with a suitable inscription to the memory of the foreign
soldiers and sailors who, after years of captivity, died in the prison,
and were buried in this neglected spot.
The information as to any provision for the spiritual welfare of the
prisoners is very meagre. Marriages and births, calling for the
sanctification of a church, there were none, but 1,770 deaths and burials
there certainly were, as the certificates show.
Neither in the register nor on the certificate of those deaths, whether
the prisoners were Roman Catholic or Protestant, does the name of priest
or parson appear.
This applies only to the prisoners who died in confinement, not to the
soldiers who guarded them. The Depot was in the parish of Yaxley, and in
the churchyard of St. Peter’s, the parish church, the majority of the
British soldiers who died while quartered at the barracks were buried,
and their names are entered in the parish register and signed by the
officiating minister.
The first entry connected with the Depot in the Yaxley Register is that
of “John Smart, suffocated at the Barracks, February 12th, 1797.” He was
probably a workman employed during the erection of the buildings, which
were not occupied until two months later; after this date, and up to
1814, occur entries of soldiers’ burials at the rate of from twenty to
thirty per annum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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