The Great War Hut
Constructing the huts
Local construction workers onsite c.1915 The huts were constructed in wood with a door in each end and windows down the
side. The first troops began to move into the huts in early 1915.
Usage
There were two types of accommodation hut on the camps
those for officers and those for enlisted men. The officers
each had their own stove and the photograph shows the
hut in the foreground with several chimneys . The huts
in the distance were the huts for the ordinary soldiers and
they had to share one stove which was located in the
centre of the hut.
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Enlisted huts to rear and Officers huts in foreground at Brocton camp |
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Only one stove to keep them warm in the cold winters |
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Home for the duration of the soldiers' training |
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The huts were home for the duration of the soldiers' training both eating and
sleeping here. They even spent Christmas here too!
After the War
The huts were dismantled and removed from Cannock Chase around 1920. Many
of the huts were sold to locals who used them as workshops, houses and even
as a village parish hall.
Cannock Chase Great War Camps Interpretation Centre
The hut which was to become the Cannock Chase Great War Camps Interpretation
Centre spent 85 years of its life as a parish hall in the village of Gayton, around 10
miles north of Cannock Chase. It was used to host whist drives, dances, wedding
receptions as well as local meetings.
In 2006 when Gayton Parish Council secured funding for a
new parish hall they offered the old hut to the Friends of
Cannock Chase who, in partnership with Staffordshire
County Council, gained funding from the Aggregates Levy
Sustainability Fund to re-erect the hut on the Chase. The
parish hall was dismantled in May 2006, but before this was
completed an archaeological building recording survey was
carried out to ensure that is could be accurately reconstructed. It only took three weeks to dismantle the hut
and then it was removed to a secure storage area prior to its
reconstruction next to Cannock Chase Visitor Centre.
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Undergoing archaeological building recording |
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Hut being dismantled in Gayton |
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The rebuilding of the hut was
carried out in the Spring of 2007
and had been completed by
June 2007. Much of the
original hut has been preserved
and the interior has been partially
fitted out as it would have looked in
c.1916 at the height of its life as the
home to those young men who
were to be sent out to war in
northern France and Belgium.
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