Often referred to as Dorchester’s Best-kept Secret, the First World War POW camp set up on its outskirts turned the town into a place of national military importance.

The camp at Poundbury, where the Grove trading estate now stands, was the largest in the country and was the ‘parent camp’ of institutions stretching from Birmingham to Penzance to Sussex.

At the time, Dorchester had a population of less than 9,000 souls – and at its busiest the camp held almost 4,500 internees, many of them civilians to start off with but with increased numbers of combatants as the war progressed.

Dorchester historian Brian Bates has long been fascinated by the camp and the effect it had on the town and the local population.

From the moment the plan was conceived, Poundbury Camp became a point of interest for townspeople who – it appears – treated the interns with courtesy and curiosity and played a large part in the establishment’s operations. The POW camp began life as home to Dorchester’s artillery but when they went off to fight the government requisitioned the base for foreign captives.

Brian said: “They put up wire around the camp with state-of the-art illuminations and everyone came out to look at it when they turned the lights on.”

The comfort of the prisoners was paramount, their welfare considered worthy of government intervention.

Brian said: “Parliament complained that the prisoners of war were sleeping in tents in the winter. A man was dispatched to investigate and reported back that the prisoners had nice huts with heating in them and that it was the prison guards sleeping in tents.

“As numbers swelled, they needed more accommodation so it was decided that wooden huts would be built. Everyone thought that the Germans would build them but Dorchester TUC said that they wanted British workmen to build them instead.”

As well as comfortable billets, the POWs also enjoyed a range of facilities and entertainment.

The Dorchester YMCA funded a reading room for the inmates and they also had a theatre, hospital complete with operating theatre, bakery and kitchen, library, chapel and ‘soldatenheim’, or soldiers home.

There was sport and recreation on top of Poundbury Hillfort and even a pets’ corner in the camp where the Germans kept rabbits, seemingly for companionship rather than food.

While they were interned the POWs were taken out in parties to work around the town, which they were paid for. Ordinary soldiers could buy cigarettes and other comforts at the camp store, while officers were allowed to buy alcohol. It was a much better standard of living than their comrades at the Front were experiencing.

Brian said: “When you think that between 8,000 and 10,000 men passed through there, only 45 died. Of those, all but 12 died in the flu epidemic “The 45 who died all had military funerals, which usually took place early in the morning to avoid traffic. The coffins were draped in a flag, put on a gun carriage and taken to Fordington cemetery along High West Street and High East Street. There would be a full military band with the drums draped in black and the British garrison would send wreaths.

“A gun salute was fired over the graves and the Chronicle newspaper reported each funeral in detail.”

In the four years the camp was operational there were just four escape attempts, the most famous being the case of Otto Koehn – known as ‘the German Jack-in-a-box’ – who got as far as the docks at Tilbury concealed in a crate. His escape was foiled when stevedores rolled the crate down the ramp to a waiting ship – the jolting got too much for him and he stuck his head out and surrendered.

One of the more tragic episodes came right at the end of the war when a young Polish soldier was shot trying to cut the wire surrounding the camp. He was taken to hospital in Dorchester where he died.

The repatriation of the interns left a large gap in the town and there are no details – as far as Brian is aware – of any staying behind and marrying local women.

Brian said: “The local newspaper received a lovely letter from a ‘disgusted of Dorchester’ reprimanding the young women in the town who gathered around the fence of the camp when the Germans did their daily exercises. He called them ‘Daughters of Eve’ and said that they ‘should remember that they are English women’.”

  • Brian Bates is author of Dorchester remembers the Great War (Roving Press, £12.99)