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In August 1914, Handforth was a sleepy village on the outskirts of Wilmslow. By November of the same year its population had more than doubled and there were more Germans there than English.

The village had become home to one of the largest internment camps in the country during the Great War.

The War Office took over a recently built print works in September 1914 and converted it to a ‘concentration prison’ for Germans. The first 500 prisoners arrived on 6 November followed by another 500 from East Africa later that month. By April 1915 there were nearly 2,000 prisoners behind the wire at the camp, which soon was swollen by German civilians interned following anti-German sentiment after the sinking of the Lusitania.

More than 20 of the prisoners died at the camp – they were initially buried with their own memorial at Wilmslow Cemetery but their bodies were exhumed in the 1960s and reburied at Cannock Chase Cemetery in Staffordshire.

Location: Handforth (near Wilmslow), Cheshire East SK9
Image: Handforth internment camp, courtesy of IWM

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