Army Camp, Eastern Electricity Depot and Trafalgar Road housing estate in Eaton Ford
There is little evidence today of the army camp in Eaton Ford apart from a housing estate with roads named after battles.
The Army Camp was built around 1937/38, recall the residents of Mill Hill Rd. It stretched from the bottom to the top of the hill with the bottom boundary being Rose Cottage, the old farmhouse which once stood at 11 Mill Hill Road. There were two gates leading into the camp, the bottom gate approximately where Alamein Rd is and the top main gate at Trafalgar Road where large lorries came and went day and night. Coils of barbed wire surrounded the camp.
One resident recalls that the MOD took over in 1938 and built a training camp for new recruits enlisted as part of the re-armament. At the outbreak of war the camp changed to a REME base (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) and during the war years a searchlight and anti aircraft gun placement was sighted at the top of the camp – opposite the entrance to the present supermarket.
At the top of the hill were the officers’ quarters, and at the bottom were workshops and accommodation for the German prisoners of war. Nissen huts on the site provided accommodation for women and men, ATS (Air Training Service) and soldiers. The number of soldiers who could be accommodated is unknown but one resident recalls that it was a lot. There were also maintenance sheds in the camp. In the later years of the war the buildings on the western side also housed displaced persons and included a number of Polish people. Residents also recall that at the top of the hill was a large pile of earth (as high as a house) that was moved by the German prisoners by hand – it was used for levelling out the site.
One resident does not recall German prisoners of war and noted that this was a transit camp. Soldiers travelled down the Great North Rd – they had a good meal, sometimes stayed here for a night and then continued southwards to the ports for Europe. Soldiers were often marched to the railway station at St Neots and were then taken to Dover and across the English Channel. Four people worked in the NAAFI (Navy Army and Air Force Institute). The NAAFI was the place where men could eat – only one local person was employed, Mrs Basson from Mill Hill Rd.
The camp had quite an impact on the local residents. Christmas parties were held for local children and prisoners of war made children’s toys in their spare time, such as wheelbarrows, cars and lorries. One resident recalls a particularly loud sergeant major with a very strong loud voice – very keen on discipline. She could clearly hear his voice from her house near the camp. Another very positive effect was the continual supply of petrol to the filling station just above the camp on the Great north Rd. Local residents recall that it never ran dry as it had to supply the army lorries.
In the 1938 Electoral Register there is no mention of the camp but after the war the camp remained in MOD hands and people continued to live here. In the 1945 Register Monica E. Spicer and Agnes Martin were listed as living in the N.A.A.F.I. During the floods of 1947, when the waters reached up to 62 Mill Hill Rd, the cookhouse was used as a feeding station for Eaton Ford and Eaton Socon. Food was punted out and delivered by horse and cart. The camp continued in MOD hands throughout the 1950s and in September 1956 the Eaton Socon School registers listed three children who began school from the camp - Edward Arthur Morley and his sister Patricia Anne Morley and Leslie Alan Carpenter. The Morleys moved to Enfield in July 1959 and around this time the site was sold.
The whole site was bought by the Eastern Electricity Board around 1960 and from 1960 to 1969 it was established as a works depot using the many original MOD buildings for the 210 staff based here employed on overhead line, cable jointing, fitting and metering, and electricians operating throughout the area backed up by a transport unit and stores depot, together with training schools for tradesmen and office staff.
During this period the EEB had planned to develop the site, demolish the many small buildings and build a new office block and depot to house its operation from the Bedford and Huntingdon sites but due to the District Councils plan for industry in only certain dedicated sites in the town no planning permission was given. One building that had an untimely end was the cookhouse, which suffered a serious fire in the early hours on a Wednesday morning at 6.00 am around 1960/1961.
The EEB depot closed around 1969/70 and many of the buildings were demolished. In 1970 the top half of the site was sold and development of the Trafalgar Road estate began. Roads and drains were built by the council and individual building plots were offered for sale for self build projects and small multiple plots to small local builders. Building plots were offered at £45 per foot of frontage making a 40 foot plot £1800 with the self build continuing up to 1977 where at weekends whole families worked continuously on the sites to build their own homes, hence the whole variety of houses and bungalows on the site. The entrance at Gate 1 became Trafalgar Rd.
While the top part of the site was being developed in 1971 the bottom part of the site was retained as a smaller unit for the EEB until 1977 when the remainder of the site was acquired by Wheatley Builders. Residents recall that the reason the council did not develop local authority housing on the site was due to larger blocks of land being sold for council properties elsewhere in the St Neots area.
In the late 1970’s there were still some buildings left from the army camp that were being used and it is thought that the last long silver aluminium building, used as a large carpenters store and workshop while the Alamein Rd housing estate was being built, was removed from the bend in Mill Hill Rd in February 1983. Alamein Rd was made at the entrance at Gate 2.