Scanned image of view from West

Description Scanned image of view from West

Date 23/8/1997

Collection Records of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), Edinbu

Catalogue Number SC 645515

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of C 73200 CN

Scope and Content World War II Italian Chapel, Lamb Holm, Orkney Islands The construction of the Churchill Barriers across the four eastern channels of Scapa Flow was begun in 1940 and continued for much of the remainder of World War II. As work progressed, they came to be recognised less as military barriers and more as civilian causeways, which is what they eventually became in 1945. Because of other wartime demands, workers for the project were in short supply, and a relaxed interpretation of the Geneva Convention allowed the labour force to be augmented substantially by Italian prisoners-of-war from early 1942 onwards. A chapel at Camp 60 on Lamb Holm remains a picturesque memorial to the Italian contribution and to its principal creator, Domenico Chiocchetti. It was one of two chapels built in Orkney by Italian prisoners-of-war, another one having once stood at Camp 34 on Burray. This is the west or entrance front of the chapel on Lamb Holm which is oriented east-west in keeping with medieval ecclesiastical tradition. Behind this bright and decorative gabled frontispiece two conjoined Nissen huts are laid end to end. The cement-rendered front is surmounted by a belfry and in the tympanum above the columned porch there is an inset panel of the head of Christ wearing a crown of thorns moulded in red clay. The applied ornament consists of crockets, blind arcading and fleur-de-lys. Foundations of other huts which made up Camp 60 are visible nearby. At the heart of the Orkney archipelago, Scapa Flow was the main fleet anchorage for the Royal Navy during both World Wars. Its vital importance led to the creation of one of the most concentrated defence networks in Britain. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/645515

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap