Confinement and Conflict

The Channel Island of Jersey's First World War POW camp was in use from 1915-1919, and housed German naval personnel. Between 2015 and 2019, a collaborative project between Universities of Cambridge (Dr Gilly Carr), Liverpool (Professor Harold Mytum) and Bristol (Professor Nick Saunders) sought to map all extant features of the site using magnetometry, photogrammetry and archaeological survey techniques. The site, then as now, sits at the base of sand dunes. Lacking any kind of blueprint for a POW camp, those who built the camp first flattened the undulating land as far as possible, and the flat-packed, barrack-block camp was laid out in the style of a British army camp. Although the wooden buildings were sold off after WWI and the camp dismantled, over the last 100 years sand dunes have reclaimed some of the area. However, the foundations of buildings and the perimeter of the camp have dictated dune formation in places, as shown in modern aerial photos.