The Blockhouse, Norman Cross Barracks, 1809

Watercolour by Captain George Lloyd, 1809.

The interior of Norman Cross Prison and Barracks, Huntingdonshire (now in Cambridgeshire). An octagonal blockhouse, positioned in the centre of the facility, with swivel guns mounted on the second floor, stands alongside a sentry box with palisaded compound to the right.

Norman Cross 'Depot' was a purpose built prisoner of war camp and barracks designed to hold thousands of predominantly French and Dutch prisoners of war, captured during the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802) and the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815). Over 1,700 prisoners died at Norman Cross, the majority of them during a typhus outbreak in 1800. Much of the facility was demolished in 1816 but some structures remain along with a memorial to the prisoners who died there.