visiting the Forest...... wk end 7th July (General)

by willow, Sunday, July 02, 2006, 06:07 (6516 days ago)

I'm visitin the the forest this weekend

I'm hoping to go to Broadwell and video the streets as they are now, so that I can bring it back to lincolnshire and my father pin point places of family history for me.

I saw a photo in a book he has that was something about prisoners of war
(polish maybe?) decorating a church in Broadwell, the picture showed a very ornate alter, and i was wondering if it was still there?

I'm also wondering if anyone knows the name/address of the vicar of St Johns Cinderford, I would like to know if theres a way i can pinpoint 2 burials in the churchyard.

I am meeting a new member of my now extended family for the first time in Ross on Wye, from my Cinderford branch of the tree. I hope to introduce her to this site.

if anyone is around the area and see's someone videoing...please say hi.


if anyone can answer the questions I'd be grateful

visiting the Forest...... wk end 7th July

by slowhands @, proud of his ancient Dean Forest roots, Sunday, July 02, 2006, 06:50 (6516 days ago) @ willow

bring it back to lincolnshire

You leave the Vorest out yer in thic West !!!

http://members.lycos.co.uk/churchstjohn/


Revd. John Holder
St. John's Vicarage,
1 Abbott's View, Buckshaft, Cinderford, Glos. GL14 3EG

however I think there is a change of vicar shortly , and the web site advises contacting the Church Warden......

visiting the Forest...... wk end 7th July

by willow, Sunday, July 02, 2006, 08:30 (6516 days ago) @ slowhands

thanks slowhands i'll email the church warden from that website

dont suppose you know anything about the Broadwell/prisoners/church thing?


btw....if you cant get the boy back to the forest...take the forest to the boy...

Italian POW's + Broadwell <Camp 61 , Wynol's Hill >

by slowhands @, proud of his ancient Dean Forest roots, Sunday, July 02, 2006, 09:37 (6516 days ago) @ willow

http://www.radiomarconi.com/marconi/aaa4.html

http://theforestreunited.co.uk/forest4/the_moni.html

have a feeling its linked to the Italian PoW's and the old Marconi monument.

I do understand, about taking "the Vorest to the Boy", its rather pleasing that in a small way we are helping via the WWW to do just that. If its Auckland, Vancouver, Haifa, Perth, Somerset, Yorkshire, London, Lincolnshire etc this board has been successful in making our passion and shared heritage accessible to all .....

Italian POW's + Broadwell <Camp 61 , Wynol's Hill >

by willow, Sunday, July 02, 2006, 10:26 (6516 days ago) @ slowhands

Thank you for that....

i think these are the men that built the thing I am trying to locate, I shall be visiting Dad tomorrow anyway, so will borrow the book and scan the thing I am bumbling on about.

All i remember is it was in a church or a building where they turned it into a church alter, I just remember the photo and the beauty of it.

Italian POW's + Broadwell <Camp 61 , Wynol's Hill >

by unknown, Sunday, November 06, 2011, 18:00 (4563 days ago) @ slowhands

2011-11-06 – Family Forum

My name is Laura Porciani (PLAURA).

I am the daughter of the POW Bruno Porciani that during the imprisonment in the Camp 61 (Broadwell-Colway), planned and directed the jobs to build, inside the Camp, the small Church with the painted altar.

I am very interested to know the Title, the Author and the Publisher of the book with the photo of some POW's that they were decorating an altar.

I’d be grateful.

Plaura


Reference:
visiting the Forest...... wk end 7th July (General)
by willow, Sunday, July 02, 2006, 06:07 (1953 days ago)

Italian POW's + Broadwell <Camp 61 , Wynol's Hill >

by Jefff @, West London, Middlesex, Sunday, November 06, 2011, 18:33 (4563 days ago) @ unknown

Hi Plaura, welcome to the forum.
You can search the forum for related threads, eg this one may be of help to you.
http://www.forum.forest-of-dean.net/index.php?id=24918

Italian POW's + Broadwell <Camp 61 , Wynol's Hill >

by Jefff @, West London, Middlesex, Thursday, April 24, 2014, 00:24 (3664 days ago) @ slowhands

While browsing the forum I found this interesting thread, and have noticed the old link for the "Forest Reunited" website was broken. I'm very pleased to report that the "FR" website is back on-air. I first discovered this great little site after hearing about a RFDGS school reunion 14!! years ago that sadly I couldn't attend, I was pleasantly surprised to see the site contains many items written by Richard Howarth from Broadwell who was in my year at the school, 1973-78.

The new link to the Camp 61 item, and hence the rest of this site, is;
http://www.helm.uk.com/pages/forestreunited/forest4/the_moni.html

Thanks Richard et al for relaunching your great website.
http://www.helm.uk.com/pages/forestreunited/index.htm

German POW's at Camps in Broadwell & Chepstow

by Jefff @, West London, Middlesex, Wednesday, October 25, 2017, 15:45 (2383 days ago) @ Jefff

I've just stumbled-on some interesting items of personal mail which have just been listed on a well-known auction website. They were sent by a German prisoner of war Unteroffizier Friedrich Aschke; his rank was roughly equivalent to our Corporal, probably from the German Air Force but possibly Army too.

The first item is an official postcard dated February 1946, sent from a Camp at Chepstow. It is addressed to a town on the southernmost edge of Germany, which was apparently within the American Zone.

The second item was a longer letter dated May 1946, sent from Camp 61 at Wynol's Hill, which is how I stumbled across it. This one is addressed to the same person & town as the earlier card. Is there any significance at all that it's written in red ink ?, which is a shame as red fades easily and is also difficult to scan or photocopy.

The third and perhaps most poignant item is another letter dated November 1946, sent from Camp 59, Sawtry, Huntingdon(Cambridge)shire. This one is sent to the same person, Frau Aschke, but this time addressed to Potsdam in the Russian Zone. In 1946 Potsdam lay just outside West Berlin, so became part of the German Democratic Republic. I cannot speak German so cannot read the letters, which are legible on the auction page scans, but one can only imagine how concerned Friedrich must have been on discovering his loved one, maybe mother or wife, was now apparently under Communist rule.

---

I hadn't realised there was a P.O.W. Camp at Chepstow, perhaps not a surprise seeing as this excellent article states there were hundreds of camps across the UK, needed to house 400,000 P.O.W.s of WW2. It lists dozens of known camps, the Camp at Chepstow was number 197, at the Mount, Chepstow. It lists another 8 more in Gloucestershire, mostly in the north of the county especially around Tewskesbury and Moreton on Marsh, presumably as these areas needed agricultural labourers.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/nov/08/prisoner-of-war-camps-uk#data

Also see this list (Island Farm was the camp in Brigend where 70 German prisoners escaped from in early 1945. All were recaptured soon afterwards, including a few on Ruardean Hill).
http://www.islandfarm.wales/LIST%20OF%20UK%20POW%20CAMPS2.htm

It seems that some of these camps were not just P.O.W. camps but also Polish Resettlement camps, including one in Gloucestershire, (which explains to me some of the background for the Father Brown tv series "in" the Cotswolds).
http://www.northwickparkpolishdpcamp.co.uk/
There were two camps in Herefordshire including one at Ledbury.

Camp 197 at Chepstow is another that wasn't just for enemy P.O.W.s. This article shows how a Scottish solder who had been a P.O.W. in Italy escaped and eventually found himself at Chepstow.
"he was so badly malnourished that he had to be hospitalised. His family were told he was alive, but they didn’t see him till many months later. We understand from army papers that he was in Camp 197, Mount Stuart, Chepstow. We have a photo that shows him after having been ‘fattened up’—dad was never that size. He was fed very small amounts of food, chocolate, and milk until he recovered."
https://camp59survivors.wordpress.com/2016/04/06/thomas-penman/

These personal memories of WW2 in Chepstow includes mention of the camp;
"Prisoners of War were in the camp at Bulwark (where Critchcraft now stands). They were used to arrive at a stop away from the main Railway Station at Chepstow. This was at the end of Caird Street, in Garden City. My young brother and his friends, complete with home made wooden guns - not many toys in the shops at that time - would march behind the poor prisoners, all the way up to Bulwark Camp. I think most of these men were glad that their part of the war was over. We used to go and chat to them (as best we could) through the fences, and if we took some raw materials, and a few cigarettes, they would make us the most lovely slippers, and wooden toys in exchange. Later on there were German prisoners camped at what is now St Lawrence Hospital - they were mainly officers I believe. "
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/02/a4066102.shtml

"An interesting aspect of the period concerned the use of Chepstow Racecourse. The entire property was requisitioned early in the war, the stables being converted into a Prisoner of War Camp for the German Army with a portion of St. Lawrence Hospital being set aside as a Prisoner of War Hospital where severely wounded prisoners were treated. It so happened that the Royal Army Medical Corps Colonel Commandant of the Hospital was the father of a friend of mine with whom I was at school. As a result of this I spent a considerable time up at St.Lawrence during the school holdays."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/96/a4065996.shtml

During my engineering Apprenticeship at Ranks Mitcheldean we spent a day in 1978 visiting the Army Apprentices College at Beachley. I enjoyed this, partly as I'd considered joining the Army Engineers, and partly as it's location under the Severn Bridge had always intrigued me with it's ski slope etc. Sadly the lasting memories are trivial - seeing 16 year olds like us literally dangling off massive wrenches trying to remove 6' wheels from huge tractors, and the excellent canteen dinner... The College was set-up in 1924, posssibly using the same buildings that had previously been a P.O.W. camp set-up as part of the ill-fated National Shipwards plan. There are German & Italian P.O.W. graves at Beachley churchyard. The site is currently the Barracks for 1st Battalion The Rifles.

http://armyapprenticescollege.homestead.com/Newsletter_2017.pdf
http://tidenhamhistory.co.uk/beachley/
http://www.tidenhamparishcouncil.co.uk/parish-history/
http://www.chepstowsociety.co.uk/aspbite_protect/imagemod/fck/ww1.pdf

=================

I hope Admin don't mind me placing this link to one of the auction items. If anyone reading this is interested in them, please be assured I'm not connected in any way with the sale, and I will not be bidding.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1946-P-O-W-mail-written-in-German-camp-No-61-Broadwell-Colefo...

visiting the Forest...... wk end 7th July

by Ashton, Wednesday, July 19, 2006, 03:10 (6499 days ago) @ willow

Dont know how successful you were about pinpointing the burials - have you tried the memorial inscriptions held by the Gloucestershire FHS? If your ancestors had a headstone which was still legible in the last few years, these have been recorded and indexed for reference. Look on the website www.gfhs.org.uk or contact them with specific info on gfhs[at]gfhs.org.uk

There is a small charge for referencing but I've found the info really helpful - occasionally confirming other relationships or finding children I didnt know about.

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