Watching Brief

Date February 2016 - June 2016

Event ID 1013348

Category Recording

Type Watching Brief

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1013348

NS 54039 21239 A watching brief was carried out, February – June 2016, on the site of a former WW2 military training and POW camp within the Dumfries House estate in advance of the redevelopment of the site for a new Farm Education Centre.

The camp is known as Auchinleck, Temple, Camp 22 or Base Camp and is visible on vertical air photographs flown by the RAF in 1945. It was used as a Military Training Camp before and during the war, becoming a POW camp

towards the later years of the war. After the war it housed resettled Polish soliders and was later used for local families. Examination of the air photographs revealed well over 100 huts in the compound, several of which have ‘formal gardens’ to the rear. In the central area of the camp is a group of larger huts, presumably the mess, kitchen and recreation

buildings. Later photographs show that by 1951 the camp had been almost totally demolished, with only a few huts surviving at the N end.

Over 80 buildings were recorded, with brick foundations, concrete floors, pathways and shower blocks all identified. The finds from the site include metal badges, NAAFI crockery and cutlery, concrete moulds and children’s toys. Recreation areas and more formal garden areas associated with the

camp were identified, as were a small number of features predating the camp and associated with the Dumfries House Estate; these included an area of rig and furrow, as well as a former roadway.

Archive: NRHE

Funder: The Great Steward of Scotland’s Dumfries House Trust

Philip Karsgaard and Elizabeth Jones – Addyman Archaeology

(Source: DES, Volume 17)

OASIS ID: addymana1-300184