Camp 60 on Orkney housed nearly 600 Italian prisoners-of-war, captured during the 1942 North Africa campaign. On Orkney they worked on building the Churchill Barriers, a series of concrete causeways sealing off the eastern approaches to Scapa Flow, northern base for the British Fleet.
The Italians transformed their camp on the tiny island of Lamb Holm by landscaping the ground around their Nissen huts, creating a theatre, recreation hut and lastly a chapel.
Late in 1943, two Nissen huts were given to the POWs, and using concrete (there was no shortage of that), second-hand materials and scrap, they worked together to make an altar; a chancel covered by plaster-board and paintwork; windows of painted glass; candelabra in brass and iron; and a rood-screen in wrought iron.
The entire interior was painted to imitate carved stone and brick, and above the altar was a fresco of a Madonna and Child. It was still being completed when the POWs left for home in 1945, but it has since been restored and is now a much-loved visitor attraction.
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