When hundreds of POWs called Oxford home

Today it's a peaceful paddock, but during the Second World War this unassuming field was a bustling prisoner-of-war camp

Sep 23, 2023

This unremarkable brick building hides a remarkable secret.

Now a humble paddock storeroom, it once stood at the entrance to one of Oxford’s World War Two prison camps.

Between 1942 and 1947, hundreds of German and Italian POWs called No.43 Harcourt Hill Working Camp, near North Hinksey, their home.

The huts they lived in have long since disappeared - although their ghostly outlines can still be seen on Google Earth.

Outlines of the PoW huts as seen on Google Earth

The men at Harcourt Hill were among more than 400,000 Germans and Italians held in prison camps in Britain during the Second World War.

Harcourt Hill opened on farmland in 1942 and was originally home to 600-700 Italian POWs, before taking in Germans and other nationalities from 1944.

At working camps or labour battalions such as Harcourt Hill, POWs were put to work in the local community, from painting and decorating, to working in factories or on farms.

There was special currency to spend on camp, with prisoners often building toys to sell to local children to top up their income. Some families even invited them round for dinner. Many camps had football pitches, and there were regular Saturday afternoon matches.

Almost certainly a far more attractive proposition than being shot at, shot down or sunk.

Not everyone was happy, though. In October 1946, two German prisoners escaped from Harcourt Hill, but were found three days later in Middlesex. Fritz Kroeger, 35, and Hans Kraus, 27, were caught hiding in the roof of the grandstand at Kempton Park racecourse.

Although the war ended in 1945, the camp didn’t close until 1947.

Despite having been the ‘enemy’, such was their impact on the local community, that Oxford Station was crowded with people saying a tearful farewell when the POWs were eventually free to go home.

The buildings remained for some time afterwards. Maps from the 1950s show the site as a “hostel”, but it’s unclear who lived there and what its function was.

At some point, though, the structures were eventually pulled down.

Building materials were in short supply after the war, so it’s likely that most of the bricks, metal and wood from the camp were re-purposed elsewhere.

However, chunks of reinforced concrete, corrugated roofing material and and a huge metal water tank, can still be seen along the bottom edge of the camp, where it meets the Hinksey Nature Trail.