German POW camps in the UK.

Aaron 2015,

Over 25,000 Germans officially stayed on in Britain after the last PW camps were closed in early summer 1948. By this time the segregation of white grey and black prisoners had ceased and release of prisoners was done in numerical batches and men knew when they were going to be released. Men were also allowed from 1947 onwards to travel across the UK alone and visit friends as long as they were back by a set time. They were also allowed to marry UK citizens. If you want the latest decent overview of the development of prisoner freedoms, try Robin Quinn's book Hitler's Last Army, which I have read, but I am not connected with him in any way.

 

Listed earlier:

Crewe Hall is mentioned in this article today: Where tourists seldom tread part 9: four more British towns with secret histories and the link for the hotel using it now refers to:

From: The History of Crewe Hall | Crewe Hall Hotel, Cheshire

 

I came across this site
World War 2 Museum Yorkshire: Eden Camp Modern History Museum
From the site
Eden Camp Modern History Museum is a family owned and run business that started over 30 years ago.
Originally a prisoner of war camp, it was built on an agricultural plot on the outskirts of Malton in early 1942, by a small contingent of army personnel who had travelled from Castle Douglas, Scotland.

Their task was to construct a barbed wire enclosure and erect tents to form a temporary camp to accommodate Italian prisoners of war that had been captured by Allied forces in North Africa.

The camp’s location on Eden House Road earned it the name ‘Eden Camp’ and its first residents, 250 Italian prisoners were escorted from Oldham and marched through Malton to their new home. Once settled, they began work on constructing a larger and more permanent camp.

At its peak, Eden Camp’s 45 huts were supplemented by a large area of tented accommodation and could house around 1200 prisoners at any one time. The Italian prisoners gave way to German POW in the summer of 1944, with the successful Allied invasion of Normandy. The German prisoners, like the Italians before them, were mainly put to work locally in agriculture and they lived in the huts at Eden Camp until 1948, when they were finally released, 3 years after the war had ended.


It is these original huts that were purchased by Stan Johnson in 1985. In 1985, local businessman Stan Johnson discovered that P.W. Work Camp 83 was still generally intact and that thirty-five of the original huts were in roughly the same condition as when the last of the 1,200 inmates left for the ‘Fatherland’ in 1948. Mr Johnson bought the site and initially invested £750,000 to create, within the original Camp, the world’s only Modern History Theme Museum.

The huts have been re-equipped to tell the story of The People’s War, the social history of life in Britain from 1939 to 1945. So many Museums simply display exhibits in cabinets and are dull affairs, but not Eden Camp. Realistic tableaux, with moving figures, authentic sounds and smells have been created to “transport you back in time”.