Island Farm
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Island Farm was a former Prisoner of War Camp (Camp 198/Special Camp IX) on the outskirts of the town of Bridgend, South Wales. It hosted a number of Axis prisoners, mainly German. The list of former inmates includes many senior SS military leaders, who were awaiting extradition to the Nuremberg trials.
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[edit] The "Forgotten" Great Escape
On 10 March 1945, seventy prisoners managed to escape from Island Farm via a tunnel dug from Hut Nine (the only hut left standing). The tunnel itself was about 70 feet long and managed to breach the perimeter fence.
Some of the techniques used by the inmates were ingenious and not too dissimilar to those in the famous war film The Great Escape which ironically focused on Allied prisoners. It included the building of a false wall to conceal earth removed in the tunnel's construction, with the mud condensed into clay balls. Wood was stolen from the prison canteen to shore up the tunnel, and eventually from the beds of the prisoners themselves. The tunnel even had its own electric lights, tapped off the mains supply. Noise was concealed by chorus singing.
On the night of 10 March at around 10pm, the prisoners made their move, a few stole the local doctor's car and managed to get as far as Birmingham, at least 120 miles from Bridgend and another group managed to get as far as the port of Southampton. The prisoners knew their way around through crude but accurate rough drawings of Wales and the surrounding area, mainly of railway lines and principal roads.
All of the escapees were eventually captured and were not officially punished although certain reports suggest the overseers did torture them.
The media blamed the guards for the escape, citing that they had full knowledge of the escape through a note apparently thrown through the fence the very night of the escape suggesting that there was an escape plot. The military and the guards blamed undermanning of the camp and new stricter procedures were introduced.
[edit] The WRU Plans and Bridgend Council
The Welsh Rugby Union have submitted plans for a rugby Academy for the Welsh National team at the site, although this was met with fierce resistance by locals and historians alike.
The (at the time) council leader, the outspoken Jeff Jones considered the protestors NIMBYs. In an angry confrontation broadcast on HTV, he called the analysis on the website of an Island Farm enthusiast/historian (link below) as "crap". He was also said to have said that Hut Nine is a "shrine to Nazism".
Although this parcel of land has been subject to development proposals since the 1980s, the discovery of rare varieties of dormice, worries about the effect of urban sprawl on the nearby picturesque village of Merthyr Mawr and the general unpopularity of the then Labour Party administration's decisions in the town made this issue particularly heated.
In the 2004 Council elections, the Labour administration was replaced with a coalition of Liberal Democrats, Conservatives, Nationalists and Independents (dubbed the "Rainbow Coalition"). The new administration immediately halted the plans and although the developers Macob have threatened legal action since, it seems that the plans for Island Farm have been halted indefinitely, with the ideal situation being Hut Nine turned into a museum or restored.
[edit] Trivia
It is said General Dwight D. Eisenhower gave a speech to American troops at Island Farm off the back of a van in the build up to the D-Day landings.
