03-May-2023
Our destination today was the Knockaloe Centre for WWI Internment.
I'd always known the tiny village of Knockaloe housed an internment camp. I had absolutely no idea of its scale:
We decided to walk from Peel. Up over Peel Hill, a favourite bolt hole of mine back in the day, but unclimbed for a good long while.
It was a VERY blowy day. Also hazy. How can those two characteristics coexist? No idea...
The Hill is only 152 metres high, but you get really fab views:
It's surmounted by what is generally known as Corrin's Folly. I think that's a bit cruel. Thomas Corrin loved the hill, and in 1806, built the tower as a memorial to his family (his wife, Alice, died in childbirth in January that year, at the age of just 33). Corrin apparently liked to read by the fireplace on the third floor. But, because of complaints that mariners were mistaking the light for Peel breakwater, he was required to seal up the windows on the east side of the tower. In 1845, Thomas was buried up there too -- not without some ructions, according to the source above.
Walking down off the hill towards Knockaloe
If you arrive before the little museum opens, you can wander round the peaceful graveyard next door:
The Auschwitz Oak, planted next to the graves of Jewish internees. Tragically, when the internment camps were evacuated, some of the prisoners were "repatriated" to a home where they eventually faced terrible risk. Some internees survived Knockaloe only to subsequently die in Nazi concentration camps
The graves of Turkish internees
The graves of camp guards
The museum is informative and accessible:
The anti-German hysteria that led to the demand for internment is reminiscent of the injustice suffered by Sir Edgar Speyer, the subject of some research I did during our covid-determined sojourn in Cromer. The whole sad story also recalled Kimi Cunningham Grant's Silver Like Dust, which chronicled the internment of Japanese in the US during WWII
Camp life
Who knew?
The wind that was today whipping up the fields where the camp used to stand was an indication of how very cold it must have been in winter
A railway line serviced the camp from Peel
Bone handiwork created by the prisoners. These sad stories are also always testimony to the extraordinary resilience and inventiveness of humans
In a tragic irony, around 6,000 internees had sons fighting for Britain... In August 1918, the commander of Knockaloe Camp requested the release of 20 prisoners, who were over 45, and had sons in the forces (some of whom had already been killed). Nothing doing, however.
Across the main road, in the area where the camp would have stood, a garden of remembrance -- appropriately fenced off with barbed wire -- has been set up:
We walked back to Peel along the old railway line.
Peel Harbour. All Peel-based walks should, of course, end with a kipper bap and an ice cream on the prom... Don't tell me it's windy. Just get on with it...