Strangeness and charm
Nov. 28th, 2006 09:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustOn the edge of Weardale there is what was once a Prisoner of War camp, rescued and patched up by local history enthusiasts. I had never visited it before this weekend, but had it in mind as somewhere which might interest Jan, who is fascinated by the history of the Home Front; and when we learned that, in the weeks before Christmas there would also be a German Christmas Market there, how could we resist?
If a German Christmas Market at a Prisoner of War camp sounded a little incongruous, we didn't know the half of it (and indeed, it was not until I checked the camp's web site before writing this that I discovered that the prisoners held there were in fact Italians).
We arrived at Harperley in a fine grey mist, not quite rain, not quite fog, blurring the sky to white and intensifying the green of the hillsides. The car park perched at the top of the slope, and clinging on the the valley side below it were rows of huts, surrounded by plants and garden ornaments, and festooned with fairy lights: this was Harperley POW camp and Garden Centre. The central roadway led past huts declaring themselves to be gift shops, down to a gateway guarded by a toy soldier and bidding us heartily welcome, in German.
Through the gateway was a courtyard, in the centre of which a few stalls huddled against the damp: but the goods they offered were genuinely German - stollen with a variety of fillings (even, though it had to be fetched from the store when I asked for it, poppyseed), Mozart kugeln (including this rather splendid violin-shaped box, a stall selling nothing but ribbons for the world's most elegant parcels...
Beyond this again, we emerged into open space where one hut had been furnished as if it were a house - rather than a prison - of the period; others looked sad and lonely, as they must have looked to the men detained there.
We loitered and shopped at the stalls, and at the farm shop which lay beyond them (in fact, more of an upmarket grocery store, with a vestibule containing a mini-museum display of wartime goods, displayed as if in the windows of the shop). We decided against lunching in the restaurant, not so much because the vegetarian option was butterbean pie (which gained in authenticity what it lacked in allure) as because the only free table was so heavily decorated for Christmas that we weren't sure it was actually in use for eating.
On our way out we looked into the hut claiming to be the Christmas shop. Jan said that as she neared the door and heard Slade blasting out from within, she knew exactly what kind of Christmas shop it was going to be: maybe, but I'd never seen anything like it. As well as conventional Christmas stars and baubles, there were all kinds of decorations I had not previously associated with Christmas: the tree of owls, for example, which backed onto a tree draped with a pink feather boa. In one of the far corners, an automaton dressed as Santa Claus sat with a teddy bear on his knee, and mimed to the music; in the other - no, words fail me: go and see for yourself.
We made our excuses, and left.
If a German Christmas Market at a Prisoner of War camp sounded a little incongruous, we didn't know the half of it (and indeed, it was not until I checked the camp's web site before writing this that I discovered that the prisoners held there were in fact Italians).We arrived at Harperley in a fine grey mist, not quite rain, not quite fog, blurring the sky to white and intensifying the green of the hillsides. The car park perched at the top of the slope, and clinging on the the valley side below it were rows of huts, surrounded by plants and garden ornaments, and festooned with fairy lights: this was Harperley POW camp and Garden Centre. The central roadway led past huts declaring themselves to be gift shops, down to a gateway guarded by a toy soldier and bidding us heartily welcome, in German.
Through the gateway was a courtyard, in the centre of which a few stalls huddled against the damp: but the goods they offered were genuinely German - stollen with a variety of fillings (even, though it had to be fetched from the store when I asked for it, poppyseed), Mozart kugeln (including this rather splendid violin-shaped box, a stall selling nothing but ribbons for the world's most elegant parcels...
Beyond this again, we emerged into open space where one hut had been furnished as if it were a house - rather than a prison - of the period; others looked sad and lonely, as they must have looked to the men detained there.
We loitered and shopped at the stalls, and at the farm shop which lay beyond them (in fact, more of an upmarket grocery store, with a vestibule containing a mini-museum display of wartime goods, displayed as if in the windows of the shop). We decided against lunching in the restaurant, not so much because the vegetarian option was butterbean pie (which gained in authenticity what it lacked in allure) as because the only free table was so heavily decorated for Christmas that we weren't sure it was actually in use for eating.
On our way out we looked into the hut claiming to be the Christmas shop. Jan said that as she neared the door and heard Slade blasting out from within, she knew exactly what kind of Christmas shop it was going to be: maybe, but I'd never seen anything like it. As well as conventional Christmas stars and baubles, there were all kinds of decorations I had not previously associated with Christmas: the tree of owls, for example, which backed onto a tree draped with a pink feather boa. In one of the far corners, an automaton dressed as Santa Claus sat with a teddy bear on his knee, and mimed to the music; in the other - no, words fail me: go and see for yourself.
We made our excuses, and left.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-28 10:07 pm (UTC)The pink feather boa is to be fled from, but I do like the idea of a seasonal owl-tree . . .
no subject
Date: 2006-11-29 10:34 am (UTC)