Forest on Remires Road - What are the concrete clearings?

[holster100 10]

I was up walking the dog this morning up Redmires road. I parked by the sports fields (just behind the Sportsman pub) and wandered into the forest on the right (as you look at the fields).

 

It's quite a spooky place. I did notice at least 8 massive concrete clearings in there, each must have been 50 metres long. They kind of looked like they may have been massive air raid shelters, which have been fileld in.

 

As anyone else seen these? What are they?!?

[Mandem 13]

There used to be a Prisoner of War camp up there during the war. This what it probably is.

[Jess22 10]

Yes, it was a prisoner of war camp. It is really spooky in there isn't it. Me and my mum walk in there quite often, I would love to know more about the history of the place, and see original plans etc. There are really high walls all around the area too, thought maybe they were connected.

[holster100 10]

Wow. A POW camp. Does anyone know what those actual sites were in the camp? I suppose they look like they could have been cells.

[jjbarnesfan 10]

I was up walking the dog this morning up Redmires road. I parked by the sports fields (just behind the Sportsman pub) and wandered into the forest on the right (as you look at the fields).

 

It's quite a spooky place. I did notice at least 8 massive concrete clearings in there, each must have been 50 metres long. They kind of looked like they may have been massive air raid shelters, which have been fileld in.

 

As anyone else seen these? What are they?!?

 

The shells of the buildings are indeed the remnants of a prisoner of war camp however the original purpose was as a training camp for the City of Sheffield Regiment in the First World War.

The land around the camp was supposed to prepare the troops for trench warfare.

 

I think i have read somewhere on the internet that two thirds of the troops who trained here were killed in the Battle of the Somme.

 

I often walk up there with my dogs and feel that it would have made a wonderful museum had the site been preserved.

[Modesty 10]

If you google Redmires Prisoner of war camp their's quite a bit of stuff on there.

Seems their was a camp in WW1 and WW2, with a aircraft landing strip next to it.

I seem to remember they were Italians that were based there, last time I looked up the matter.

 

Most probabally a lot of stuff already on here if you do a search.

 

Oh and the cabin next to the Sportsman pub is one of the barrack buildings that was moved there before they knocked the camp down and planted the wood.

[Alastair 12]

It was a camp for Italian prisoners of war I think.