Prisoners of War at Cliffe Hill

Silvia Glomski’s father, Hermann Seinsch, pictured above, was a prisoner of war at Cliffe Hill from 1945 to 1947. She contacted our history society to see what we knew about the camp and to arrange a visit. This article links his story with some information about the camp and the conditions that they faced.

There are records of Cliffe Hill parkland being used for training Belgian troops in 1945. They went to mainland Europe after D-Day so it is possible their accommodation was then used as the POW camp at Cliffe Hill. We’ve found no photographs of the camp and there is no indication on the O.S. map of the area where it might have been. The buildings must have been of a temporary nature and easily removed unlike Eden Camp in Malton.

Hermann (1922 – 1989) was a skilled baker and the intention was that he would take over his father’s bakery in Birnbach near Altenkirchen in Rheinland-Pfalz. His father was a declared Anti-Nazi and a strong believer and defender of the protestant confessing church (Bekennende Kirche) which opposed the protestant Nazi movement Deutsche Christen. Hermann joined the army at the age of 18 and served in the North Africa Corps under Rommel.

The photo shows a group of soldiers receiving their uniform. Hermann is second from the left. None look very enthusiastic.

After the defeat at El Alamein and the German surrender in May 1943, many prisoners, including Hermann, were taken to prison camps in Texas. He was allocated to Camp Hood. His registration card is shown here.

Abundance of good food was also part of Hermann’s American stories.  He worked in the camp bakery and was never short of snacks.

In 1945, many prisoners were transported from Texas to the UK, distributed across the country and put to work. Hermann finished up in Lightcliffe.

Silvia recalls him speaking warmly of the people that he met and how he had been treated. He remembered contacts with the local people who treated them well. Sometimes they managed to go out and watch football. It would have been obvious to everyone that they were prisoners because of their clothing and badges.

He didn’t say much about the food at Brighouse but he mentioned that it was OK especially compared to the obviously poor nutrition of the locals he had met. He couldn’t believe that the people who had won the war had such hard living conditions at the time. POWs received food according to the Geneva Convention which seems to have contained more calories than the average meals for civilians.

In December 1946, about 60 Lutheran German prisoners of war stationed at a camp at Cliff Hill, Lightcliffe, attended a service held at St Matthew’s Parish Church – the first service to be held in a local parish church for German prisoners.

The service was arranged by Canon H. L. Taylor, Vicar of Lightcliffe and was conducted by the Rector of Elland the Rev. B. C. Pawley, who was himself an ex-prisoner of war.

The Rector served as an Eighth Army chaplain during the North Africa campaign and was taken prisoner at the battle of the Gazala Line. He was in German prison camps in Italy and Germany from 1942 until released in 1945.

Mr Pawley gave the address in German and the lessons were read by German prisoners.

The Bishop of Wakefield and the War Office expressed themselves as favourably disposed towards the holding of services for prisoners.

Another factor which led to the arranging of the service was that there was no Lutheran priest at the Cliff Hill camp; the last Lutheran padre to be stationed there was recently repatriated. About half the prisoners in the camp were Protestants.

A similar service was held for both locals and Lutherans at Hipperholme Methodist Church in October, 1947. The German chaplain, Dr Hans Leitner, gave the address and the service was conducted by the minister, Rev G S Freeman. Lessons and prayers were duplicated in English and German.

Though this was a formal service for a group of prisoners, individual prisoners are said to have attended services at local churches.

Barry Roper, whose parents kept the newsagents – now the Tea Rooms – delivered newspapers to the camp and said that the Germans took The Times, Guardian and Telegraph whilst the British soldiers took the tabloids.

There is a small irony in that many of the prisoners had been captured in the North Africa campaign and were held in the grounds of Cliffe Hill. Major Aykroyd (who had grown up in the mansion) had commanded an anti-tank brigade in that campaign.

We think that Cliffe Hill was unoccupied during the war. What has come to light is that there is graffiti in the cellars of the house.

This has been translated by Silvia and suggests a clothing list with names, followed by the number of items of clothing. This might imply that the cellar was being used as a laundry. The translation appears at the end of this article.

In January 1947, Hermann wrote to his older sister comforting her and telling her that their petition to have him repatriated had not been successful. If you were healthy, you were needed to assist the British to recover from the war effort. Only 5 sick POWs had been removed from Cliffe Hill to Butcher Hill but whether they would go onto Germany, he didn’t know. On a more positive note, he seems to have been told that he might be going home in March.

Hermann Seinsch had positive words about a Mr Peel. We now know that Fred Peel owned a small factory at Hillcrest in Hove Edge (you can still see the ruins just above St Chad’s Church). Here the prisoners worked cleaning and repairing jute sacks which were used for transporting coal. Presumably the prisoners walked each day from the camp, via the Coach Road and round to the factory.

Though after Hermann had been repatriated, Mr Peel gave a farewell party to 75 of his German workers praising them for the vital work that they had done helping the home and export markets. The Mayor and Mayoress of Brighouse were in attendance. What the prisoners thought of a production of ‘Dick Whittington’ given for their entertainment is not known!

Hermann had previously returned to Germany in 1947. It would have been a reunion of mixed emotions as his father had died of a stroke a short time before his release, his older sister’s husband had been killed near the border between Ukraine and Hungary, his brother was still a Russian POW waiting release and the family bakery had been abandoned.

This photo shows Hermann in 1948 with his widowed mother, his widowed sister and niece.

Other pieces of information have been picked up from newspaper articles and responses to a couple of FaceBook requests for information.

In 1950, Herbert Hein returned to the Calderdale district where he had been held at Cliffe Hill camp. He told The Halifax Courier that he had enjoyed considerable freedom during his stay of just over a year. He had been a regular worshipper at Hipperholme Methodist Church. He had been in demand at the camp as an interpreter as he was fluent in several languages.

Another prisoner, Karl Dellman helped to apprehend a shop thief in Mytholm (1947) and was praised by the Brighouse magistrate.

Other references to PoW camps in the area

The biggest camp in the area was at Butcher Hill in Leeds. This was in the northwest of the city close to where Abbey Grange High School now stands. It is classified by Historic England as a German Working Camp with numbers 244 & 245. (Prisoner of War Camps 1939 – 1948). Research by Oakwood Church in Leeds suggests that the camp held up to 500 prisoners who were fit for work. It seems likely that Butcher Hill acted as the centre for a series of small satellite camps such as Cliffe Hill as Lightcliffe, Shelf and even Huddersfield do not get separate mentions. It is likely that this Leeds camp was purpose built.

At least one letter home from Hermann Seinsch was addressed from Butcher Hill which might mean that all correspondence would go through a censor at the main camp before being posted to Germany.

Prisoners were divided into two classes. Those who could prove they were not Fascists were given green uniforms and had a degree of freedom. Fascist sympathisers had a brown uniform and were housed with tighter supervision in POW Camp 60 at Stirley Hill near Farnley Tyas and Castle Hill in Huddersfield. Slead Hall was used for a short time as a hostel for ‘friendly’ Italians.

There is a newspaper report of a farewell party given for 39 Germans who had spent 15 months working at Samuel Wilkinson and Sons fireclay and brick works in Blackley village near Elland. They were given a special Christmas dinner in the works canteen and leaving presents before going across the road to Blackley Baptist Church schoolrooms for a sing-song. They had a brief address from Rev Pawley and Ernest Haigh played the piano. Ernest was organist and choirmaster at St Mary’s Church in Elland. These prisoners were billeted in Leeds. It must have been a long working day if they travelled from Leeds each shift. Perhaps they were living locally but came under the Butcher Hill Camp for administration purposes.

Hans Moschel worked at W T Knowles on the Brighouse Road into Elland. We don’t know where he was based. He kept in touch with the family firm for many years.

There was a camp at Shelf Hall. William Walter Scacchetti, from Modena was a transport driver in the Italian army serving in North Africa. He was captured at El Alamein and was initially imprisoned in South Africa before being brought to England in 1944. He was given work at Brookes Ltd of Hipperholme where he met Dorothy Wilkinson. In August 1946 they were married. The groom declined repatriation and, at the time of his marriage, was working on a farm in Brighouse.

I was told that a correspondent’s mother-in-law had driven Italian POWs to work in her father’s coaches.

From 1943 some Italian PoWs, based at Shelf Hall, were employed in unskilled jobs. Around 50 were involved according to the Halifax Courier. Locally they worked at Parkinson, Spencer & Sons in Queensbury and the Leeds Fireclay Co. Ltd in Hipperholme. I wonder if this was Allen & Son down in Sunny Vale or nearby in Mytholm. Others were employed in Brighouse.

Some prisoners, both German and Italian, worked in local stone quarries. Two who worked in Northowram (based in Shelf Hall) were photographed ringing the gavelock to celebrate a wedding.

In 1946, there was an agreement between the Labour government and the trade unions, reflecting the shortage of labour and the desperate need for coal, to allow the use of POWs in the mines. There was a letter printed in the local paper raising moral concerns about keeping Germans as prisoners in camps and using them as labour as it could be seen as hypocritical in a democratic society. I have no indication of whether this was a popular view or whether the general population took this enforced labour for granted. Some reports balance sympathy for young men who probably did not want to become soldiers with the need to help the country in both industry and in agriculture.

It isn’t surprising that there is little in our local records about the prisoners. Scattered across Germany there would have been at least a hundred former prisoners with mixed memories of the enforced time in the Lightcliffe area but Hermann Seinsch’s memories are the only ones that I have seen.

We’ve been given a photograph by a family living in the Lower Edge of Elland. The story handed down is that this is of a group of prisoners but nothing else is known except that the photograph originated from someone who was a quarryman. This particular craftsman (with his wife) were sent out to Hamburg to supervise the trimming and laying of flagstones from the quarry.

If anyone has additional stories, do please contact us at admin@lightcliffehistory.org.uk .

Ian Philp, July 2026

Acknowledgements

Silvia Glomski

Dorothy Barker for researching newspaper extracts

Sam Singh, Cliffe Hill

Margaret Cobb

Helen Flockton

Rita Dilley