The buried memories of Blanches Banques
Braving thorns, rabbit holes and steep sand dunes, Gilly Carr, Harold Mytum, Rob Philpott and Nick Saunders have mapped the half-hidden traces of a First World War prison camp in Jersey
At the foothills of the sand dunes at Les Blanches Banques, in the parish of St Brelade, Jersey, are the ruins of latrines. Brick-and-concrete piers of barrack huts hide in the marram grass, next to the bitumen floors of prisonerof-war camp communal buildings, stippled with lichen and thorny coastal plants. You can make out concrete platforms and foundations of guard buildings, half-swallowed by low grass. Paths built by First World War pows still cross the site, and banks of sand mark the camp’s edge. Bucket-sized blocks of concrete, the infills of postholes, once held barbed-wire posts.
While most of Europe commemorated the centenary of the end of the First World War in 2018, for some places the centenary fell in 2019. The Channel Island of Jersey was one such place. In October 1919, Jersey’s prisoner-of-war camp for military servicemen closed for the last time, and 1,000 German prisoners were released. At least one man returned as part of the army of occupation 21 years later, and quite possibly took part on military exercises on the very same spot; but all of this still lay in the future in 1919.
Fast forward 100 years, and Islanders now use the area once occupied by the camp for walking their dogs. Very few of its traces can be seen on digital maps of the site, and only a small handful of the larger features exist on the local Ordnance Survey map. This prompted the organisation of an archaeological
project comprising team members from the universities of Cambridge, Liverpool and Bristol. The site offered plenty of opportunity for the first full survey of all extant structures, coupled with magnetometry which could capture features lying in shallow sand or in the thorny undergrowth.
In search of a camp
This project, which initially brought together Gilly Carr, Harold Mytum and Nick Saunders, began with a trial trench dug in 2015 in the area of a midden. 2015 was also the centenary year of the opening of the powcamp.
The island’s principle ecologist, John
Pinel, had told us that he remembered digging in the midden with his friends as a child, pulling out interesting bottles and pieces of pottery. To discover whether this was the camp midden, we travelled to Jersey with seed funding from the Société Jersiaise for a few days to explore what survived and to assess its potential for archaeology. It was clear that the camp had only a very thin or no soil layer. Excavation was not an option – except at the small area of the midden.
The surface in that area was covered in glass, slate and ceramics, clearly indicating the midden’s location. A one-by-one metre trench on the edge of the guards’ zone of the camp revealed densely packed, large fragments of glass bottles and domestic ceramics, the most easily recognisable of which were stoneware bottles of Jersey cider and beer. It seemed unlikely that this midden was in use during the camp’s active lifetime because a posthole for barbed wire was dug into it during the camp’s construction. That posthole, filled with concrete and then dug up and redeposited nearby, was
undoubtedly the most interesting piece of material culture on the site. The concrete contained pieces of coloured ceramics and broken fragments of a beautiful purple glass perfume bottle. Later research revealed a second midden on the edge of the camp, located in the south-west of the site. Rabbit holes in this feature revealed bits of rusty iron poking out of the sand, indicating an area of clean-up after the end of the camp’s life.
We returned in 2017 with University of Cambridge funding from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, and with the addition of Rob Philpott, an archaeologist at Liverpool University. The task was continued (and completed) in 2019, this time with more funding from the McDonald Institute, matched by the Society of Antiquaries and the University of Liverpool, and with the accompaniment of Liverpool’s Ellis Cuffe. We had five aims for the project. We wanted to conduct a total station theodolite ( tst) survey of all visible camp features to create a large-scale digital plan. By carrying out a magnetometer survey, we aimed to identify the location of structures not visible above ground. We also wished to record photographically all visible structures, and to create 3d photogrammetric modelling of the best preserved. Finally, we wanted to create a fully documented interpretive plan of the camp in order to identify each structure and its function.
We carried out a magnetometer survey of a sample area using a Bartington Gradiometer 601. The survey covered a total of 29 grid squares, each measuring 30m x 30m, and TerraSurveyor software was used to process and present the data. We began by scanning areas containing visible structures to identify the signal for concrete buildings. We then extended the survey to cover a range of terrain, both within and outside the perimeter, to locate potential structures and buried infrastructure such as drains, which were not visible on the surface. Geophysical surveys on archaeological sites usually screen out the high readings caused by iron objects, as they obscure subtle differences which distinguish buried features such as ditches, walls and postholes. Here we
actively sought these iron peaks, as they marked the stanchions and other metal fittings along the walls of the concrete-floored buildings. As a result, the magnetometer survey produced clear evidence for the buried structures within the camp. By comparing the signal of visible concrete structures, it has been possible to confirm the presence of similar structures in other areas.
We also tried to match up features on the ground with old photos of the camp’s construction and powsketches of the camp in use. Local collectors of the camp’s trench art shared their knowledge and images from their collections with the team as we attempted to build up a holistic picture of the camp and all of its surviving parts. Our hope is that our eventual report, incorporating all available information, will provide an important resource for managing the site and helping to preserve and protect it.
Tripping and probing
The camp was originally designed by Major TE Naish of the Royal Engineers. At this stage in the war, no standard design existed for pow camps, and so its layout was modelled on permanent infantry battalion camps of the day. Although he left no map, in 1955 Naish wrote a very detailed report, complete with photos, of the camp’s construction, including the area for guards and administrative staff. His report also gave detailed information about the camp’s power generation, drainage and water supply.
The camp opened on March 20 1915 and initially held 1,000 men, with a guard of 100 more in addition to administrative staff and officers. By July 1915 the complement was raised to 1,500 men, and the guard to 150 with about 30 officers, requiring construction of additional accommodation for both groups. The camp was closed temporarily on August 29 1917 after the prisoners were transported to England to work in agriculture and other roles, but reopened the following April to accommodate a thousand noncommissioned officers who, according to the Hague Convention, could not be compelled to work. The final closure took place in October 1919. After the war, the camp was demolished, leaving in place the concrete and brick foundations and below-ground infrastructure such as drains and water tanks, some of which remain visible today, although overgrown and partly covered by sand dunes.
Jersey’s powcamp measured about 300 metres square; the buildings for guards and administration lay outside this area. There were four rows of wooden huts for prisoners, of which one, auctioned off after the war, still exists in the north-western part of the island on private property. That building is at a very advanced stage of decay today, seemingly held together only by the ivy that has colonised one end and by the moss growing along the corrugated iron roof. Unfortunately the owner intends to take it down before it has a preservation order placed upon it. Other buildings of the camp, apart from the latrines and washblock, included a hospital, a communal ymca building for prisoners’ entertainments and relaxation, and of course an area for exercise and roll calls.
The administration area had a number of buildings that were less easy to identify. While the foundations of shower cubicles were clear to see, we could only assume that other buildings comprised the mess hut, sleeping accommodation and huts for the camp administration. Not all buildings left a trace that we were able to identify today. The photos and sketches of the camp showed a number of buildings in the guards’ area, but these were invisible to us.
Locating, measuring and recording the extant features of the camp was not an easy task. Not only is the site riddled
with deep rabbit holes – into which we regularly fell – but the scratchy marram grass and prickly sea holly and burnet rose made pushing aside foliage or kneeling down a painful proposition soon regretted. Most lunchbreaks were spent trying to find a safe place to sit, to pull thorns out of palms and knees, while trying not to lose equipment, unstratified finds and, sometimes, team members down rabbit holes. Striding across the landscape with a magnetometer was similarly hazardous, as there was the danger of tripping over hidden hut stilts or falling down steep dunes, which might have impeded the creation of an error-free survey. The site has a number of trees today, which appear to have flourished in an area once occupied by water drainage features. We were unable to carry out magnetometer surveys in these areas, so the final site plan has unavoidable gaps.
Some parts of the camp, such as the hospital and the recreation area, were represented only by flat concrete platforms, the edges of which were now lost. We attempted to locate these edges with probes, although, as the lower part of the camp was built either on an artificially or naturally gritty surface, and often straight onto the granite bedrock, bruised and blistered palms were often the only result of probing. Eventually, some individual buildings were successfully marked with the eye (or hand) of faith, plotted using stakes. The area identified as a hospital may be the small isolation hospital described in an April 1916 camp patients in April 1916 that one ward was used as a Roman Catholic chapel, and another as a schoolroom.
Century of military use
Working on a sandy site and observing the low dune formation led to two interesting observations. The first of these was that the dunes on the lower part of the site occasionally threw onto the paths camp material-culture in the form of fragments of chunky off-white ceramic and window glass, and even the odd metal button. We also noticed that the way that the sand had collected around the concrete and brick piers or stilts of the barrack blocks was not random. It was clear that the one-time presence of huts had caused the buildup of sand around their base. The space between the barracks had been scoured into hollows. Where no sign of the barracks remained, this pattern of low dunes and hollows indicated where they had once stood, showing the way that the camp had contributed to long-term dune formation processes.
Because much of the site is hidden in sand and foliage, new discoveries were possible on each subsequent season of fieldwork as we explored further (this time with gloves and thicker trousers). Although we had discovered the midden-based concrete infill of a
barbed wire post in 2015, it wasn’t until 2019 that we identified around a dozen of such bucket-sized concrete lumps in the north-eastern area of the camp (and only here, at the base of the dunes). Although it isn’t clear why these “inverse post-holes” were found only in this area, we noticed that while some were now almost flush with the surface of the sand, a few had an additional, smaller, square concrete post on top, into which World War Two-style barbed wire posts were embedded, now sawn-off. This reuse of both the posts and the area of the camp grounds during the German occupation for military exercises in the Second World War, could indicate that the land there was fenced off for the safety of local civilians more than two decades after the pow camp was closed.
The wider area of Les Blanches Banques sand dunes has a much longer history of use, and there are prehistoric menhirs and a small megalithic chambered tomb within sight of the camp. Evidence for multiple, more recent military phases of use for the site, however, is reflected in its material culture. In the dunes we found both flattened lead musket balls from the mid-19th century, and bits of rusting and corroded iron and aluminium militaria from the German occupation. As the Jersey Militia carried out their exercises on the site before the pows arrived, it is highly likely that remnants of 100 years of military use are still buried in the sand dunes.
With the project complete, we have shown the potential of archaeology to reclaim a past that history forgot. Despite the first impression of almost total destruction, it is now clear that much survives of Jersey’s First World War camp, buried and protected beneath dunes and thorny scrub.
Gilly Carr is senior lecturer and academic director in archaeology at the Institute of Continuing Education, and fellow and director of studies in archaeology, St Catharine's College, University of Cambridge; Harold Mytum is director, Centre for Manx Studies at the Department of Archaeology, Classics & Egyptology, University of Liverpool; Rob Philpott is a research assistant at the University of Liverpool, and former head of archaeology at National Museums Liverpool; and Nick Saunders is emeritus professor at the Department of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Bristol. Carr & Marek E Jasinski wrote about Second Word War camps in Jersey and Norway in British Archaeology Nov/Dec 2014/139
We have shown the potential of archaeology to reclaim a past that history forget
Since 1990 most archaeological excavation in Britain has been paid for by developers and overseen by local councils. “Development-led archaeology”, as it’s known, has made extraordinary discoveries. But how accessible is this new knowledge? Tim Evans, Julian D Richards & Barney Sloane report
It is nearly 30 years since the concept of development-led archaeology became enshrined in planning guidance. In those three decades, well over 120,000 investigations have taken place across the uk, funded by developers, undertaken by archaeologists and overseen by local authorities. The evidence recovered is public knowledge, available to everyone for research and learning.
Or so it should be. In recent years, however, archaeologists complained that the results of this huge endeavour were hard to find, while the sheer scale of data created its own problems. Little of the work was being formally published, and it was impossible even to know what was happening and where. Fieldwork was being successfully managed within the planning process, but the results stayed there, lodged in local authority filing cabinets – appropriately known as “grey literature”.
Archaeologists understood the need to publish new discoveries long before the era of development-led fieldwork. The records curated by Discovery & Excavation in Scotland, now published by Archaeology Scotland, begin in 1947. The British & Irish Archaeological
Bibliography, set up by the Council for British Archaeology in 1940, derives data from papers going back to the 17th century. More recently Historic England and its predecessors sought to maintain an Excavation Index, a national record of archaeological investigations. A As archaeological work grew,
however, it became
increasingly difficult to keep these catalogues up to date.
The initial solution was the Archaeological Investigations Project ( aip), which depended on archaeologists visiting local authority offices and collecting data by hand. The Archaeology Data Service ( ads), founded in the late 90s and based at the University of York, was more ambitious. In 1999 ads, English Heritage (now Historic England) and the Research Support Libraries Programme launched an 18-month pilot project called oasis. With an acronym derived from online access to the index of archaeological investigations, this set out to create a single index of grey literature that could be searched online via ads. A special form would facilitate continued collection of data in the longer term.
It worked. oasis has become a cornerstone of British archaeology. For nearly 20 years the index has been used to organise the records of fieldwork and research projects, allowing information from those doing the work to be passed on to the relevant historic environment records ( hers), national bodies and the
ads. It became clear at an early stage, however, that what users really valued was being able to read the actual reports.
In February 2005 a first batch of 329 reports, predominantly from Worcestershire, was released from
oasis into the ads Library of Unpublished Fieldwork Reports. In 2007 oasis was expanded to cover Scotland, with additional features to facilitate reporting to Discovery & Excavation in Scotland. Since 2010
ads has also produced digital object identifiers ( dois) for all reports deposited through oasis. These act as a persistent, sustainable online identifier, and are part of an established global practice.
Grey reports have come out into the light. They are freely available around the world to anyone who wants to read them, making them far more accessible than traditional paper journals or monographs, which are available only in a small number of academic libraries, or if digitised, online for high fees. They have standard bibliographic citations, and fieldworkers and archaeological specialists can be properly credited for their efforts.
oasis has collected the details of over 80,000 archaeological investigations, and made the unpublished reports of 55,000 of these freely available in the ads Library. These represent the full flavour of work and research within the historic environment, from the Palaeolithic to the present, and from the seabed to standing buildings. Five thousand new reports are added every year. The
oasis corpus is now a significant, representative window on practice and research in 21st century England and Scotland. And while the vast majority of recorded projects are development led, oasis is increasingly being used for pure research projects as well, including those undertaken by local community groups.
The reports are also being widely used. They are being downloaded over 35,000 times a year and rising, and there have been a quarter of a million downloads since 2013. Increased access has had a knock-on effect on quality. Recent studies have suggested that many of the studies coming out of commercial archaeology not only look more professional, but also show a marked effort to produce better information.
The situation is not perfect. Complete national availability requires that all archaeological practitioners – professional and amateur alike – make their reports available promptly, that local authorities sign them off, and that they are uploaded to the online library. This is not easy to achieve. Local authority historic environment services have been significantly reduced since the economic crisis of 2008. The large number and varying scale of archaeological consultancies and contractors make fundamental change and consistency an elusive goal.
But this is no cause for pessimism. Those who create, curate and use our shared archaeological heritage are driving change. In England, building the required infrastructure is the express aim of the Heritage Information Access Strategy ( hias). This is a fully crosssector collaboration led by Historic England, and involving professional institutes, trade bodies, voluntary and community organisations, universities and local government. It will redefine the English archaeological record, emphasising simple yet comprehensive, coordinated online access, data sharing, and re-use.
Similarly, Scotland’s Historic Environment Data ( shed) looks to improve access to information in Scotland. Northern Ireland too is taking steps to adopt oasis, while Wales continues to work on sharing metadata with the ads Library. With these strategies comes a new pivotal role for oasis. It’s been a long time since it was launched, and both the technology and its purpose are being redeveloped to better suit the needs of the modern historic environment community.
At the birth of oasis the idea of online recording and data sharing for the historic environment was new. Over 20 years later, technical and human challenges to sharing information online have broadly been surmounted, and the case for online access as standard has largely been won. The role of oasis has been revisited, and in line with extensive feedback from users it is now being actively redeveloped. In its new guise it will
• Be the library for all historic environment fieldwork
• Allow projects to be recorded as efficiently as possible, with controlled vocabularies
• Work more efficiently with her workflows
• Expedite the transfer of reports from oasis into the ads Library for open access.
In conclusion, the grey literature challenge has largely been overcome. But an archives crisis still remains.
In the new oasis there is a section highlighting where a physical archive is being deposited, with key details such as the accession code. Furthermore, for the first time, museums will have access to the form, allowing them to see which archives they are expected to curate. This sets up a very clear trail between all the separate sources of information, linking the online report, the finds and documents, the digital archive, the
herrecord, and even existing research frameworks. This aspiration could be the highest indicator of success, and perhaps one that cannot be measured by traditional metrics. To achieve it will require a cultural transformation, with everyone working in archaeology sharing joint ownership of the goals and tools.
It remains to be seen, but if in another 20 years we can move with ease between data, find the expected and serendipitous and work effortlessly with both digital and physical records, then the full public value of our extraordinary archaeology will have been unlocked for use by all.
It will have been worth it.