‘Hidden’ legacy of PoWs kept in Wales
In a quiet corner of Wales, there’s a collection of huts and sheds that you would probably drive straight past and think nothing more of if you saw them out of the corner of your eye.
Dig a little deeper and you find that Henllan Industrial Estate in Carmarthenshire holds secrets that changed this small village forever and still reverberate down the generations to this day.
If you walked the lanes and fields of Henllan in the 1940s you would have seen men in brown suits with yellow patches on the back working the land and tending to livestock on local farms. These men would have
been among the 1,000 Italians from the 10th army who were interned at Henllan prisoner of war camp during World War II.
The prisoners at Henllan were deeply religious men. Far from home and their families, they longed for a place for reflection and to express their Catholic faith.
They told the commandant of the camp they wanted to build a Roman Catholic church and were given use of a disused hut, but told they had to decorate it themselves.
Mario Ferlito, one of the prisoners, put up his hand when the commandant of the camp asked if there was an artist among the prisoners.
From a poor family in southern Italy, he didn’t have enough money to go to art school as he had dreamed, so he taught himself how to paint.
His skill with the brush created the incredible images at Henllan, which he painted using whatever materials and supplies he could find around the camp.
John Meirion Jones is an 84-yearold retired headmaster and author living near Pentregat, Ceredigion. A question from a group of pupils in the 1970s set him on a course to becoming lifelong friends with Mr Ferlito.
“The children were amazed with [the chapel at Henllan’s] story and the art and paintings done by the exprisoners, so when we went back to school they asked could I find out who the artist was. One of the exprisoners had left an address and the children wrote to Mario.”
Later in 1977, 15 of the ex-prisoners came back to Wales. Members of the community went to greet them at Heathrow Airport in London and brought them back to Henllan.
In the following decades, Mr Jones went to Italy to see Mr Ferlito 12 Inside the PoW chapel decorated by Italian artist Mario Ferlito times and the Italians returned to Henllan a further five times.
Sadly, Mr Ferlito passed away in 2009 but Mr Jones is still in contact with his daughter Sonia.
The legacy of Mr Ferlito and the prisoners of Henllan lives on in the community there. One ex-prisoner fell in love with Wales so much that he returned after the war, settled here and now his family runs a successful farm and Italian restaurant near the old site of the camp.
If you want to visit the chapel, group visits for 12 or more people can be arranged by calling the owners, Kerry and Gareth Thomson, on 0777 214 8937 or 0796 440 4133.