Buildings to rear of Ship Inn, Wylam

Image: © Andrew Curtis Taken: 27 Apr 2018

The tall building in the distance is Wylam Institute Image The brick buildings on the left include a storage building and beer-garden shelters associated with The Ship Inn Image The dilapidated two storey building on the right is within a former builder's yard. The ground floor walls are concrete blockwork and the upper floors of ship-lap boarding on a wooden frame. The roof is of corrugated asbestos-cement sheeting. Just behind the wall on the left is the rounded gable of a Nissen hut, possibly a building associated with a prisoner of war camp based in the village during World War 2. There were two sites near this location occupied by German and Italian prisoners. The Germans, over a period of just eight days in 1947, built a 3 foot high Bavarian castle in the gardens around their Nissen huts. It was built using using stones from the river with roofs made from tins and had four towers, electric lighting and elaborate home-made furniture, and a ball room with tapestries and carpets. The front door could be opened and closed automatically and the castle even had its own ornamental fountain. A discreet panel above the front door read ‘Built by German prisoners’ and it was intended as a lasting reminder of their stay in Wylam. It attracted hundreds of sightseers over the next two years, but in May 1949, a lorry appeared on the site, the castle was lifted from its foundations and it is reported to have fallen into pieces. An outline planning application has been approved for development of the site. After further research added this to the Heddon Local History Society blog in November 2021: http://heddonhistory.weebly.com/blog/wylam-from-above https://web.archive.org/web/20211122162819/http://heddonhistory.weebly.com/blog/wylam-from-above

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