Redmires POW Camp: Excavating History

Redmires Camp was initially set up during WW1 as a training camp for the Sheffield City Battalion. It subsequently became a prisoner-of-war camp, with its most famous inmate being German U-boat captain Admiral Karl Doenitz, who later went on to succeed Hitler as President of the German Reich.

In WW2 it became the largest prisoner-of-war camp in Britain, holding more than 11,000 inmates at its peak in 1944. Towards the end of the war, the camp was used to imprison the most fanatical of prisoners.

Between 2019 and 2023, second-year archaeology students were tasked with undertaking small research projects at the camp. As well as surveying the remains of the prison’s barracks for the first time, they analysed camp records, documents and witness statements to shine a light on living conditions inside the camp. Dr Cockrell will present these projects and describe how they contributed to what we know about the inhabitation of Redmires up to and including the present day.

Dr Cockrell is a freelance archaeologist and academic who has taught archaeology at the Workers Educational Association and the University of Sheffield. He has led or participated in many community based archaeology projects in the Sheffield area as well as in Wales, Orkney, Spain and Cyprus.

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