Environmental Impact
Italian Chapel

During WW2 Scotland was home to thousands of captured Italian and German soldiers. These POW’s were sorted into groups depending on how dangerous they were. Category A prisoners could leave the prison camp and work on the farms and roads. Category B and C prisoners were considered to be more dangerous and were guarded. Orkney became home for many Italian POW’s.
This chapel, "The Miracle of Camp 60", together with the statue of St George and the Dragon is all that now remains of Camp 60, or indeed any of the other construction sites of the Churchill Barriers.

The Italian Prisoners of War of Camp 60, who arrived in January 1942 to help build the Churchill Barriers, left behind an unusual memorial to the war - the Italian Chapel on Lamb Holm.

In 1943 a long Nissen hut was provided for the prisoners and Chiocchetti set to work, aided by a small number of other POWs. One end was to be the Chapel, the other a school.
The corrugated iron was lined with plasterboard and an altar with altar-rail cast in concrete. Chiocchetti painted the Madonna and Child behind the altar. He also frescoed a White Dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit, at the centre of the vault and included the symbols of the four Evangelists around it,  all from a picture on a card he kept throughout the war. This was so successful that more plasterboard and artistic help was procured and the whole of the hut was lined and then painted to appear like brick, while the bottom part was painted to look like carved marble.

In 1943 a long Nissen hut was provided for the prisoners and Chiocchetti set to work, aided by a small number of other POWs. One end was to be the Chapel, the other a school.

The corrugated iron was lined with plasterboard and an altar with altar-rail cast in concrete. Chiocchetti painted the Madonna and Child behind the altar. He also frescoed a White Dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit, at the centre of the vault and included the symbols of the four Evangelists around it,  all from a picture on a card he kept throughout the war.


This was so successful that more plasterboard and artistic help was procured and the whole of the hut was lined and then painted to appear like brick, while the bottom part was painted to look like carved marble. 
 
Palumbo, a metalworker, made candelabra and the rood-screen and gates. After all this work the outside seemed mean and so a concrete facade was erected  with an archway and pillars. A belfry was mounted on Top and a moulded head of Christ was placed on the front of the arch. The whole exterior of the hut was then covered with a thick coat of cement - never in short supply during the building of the Barriers!

The Italian Chapel is now one of the most-visited monuments in Orkney and is a fitting memorial to those lost in wartime. 

In recent years several of the ex-prisoners and their families have returned to visit their chapel It is somewhat ironic that most of the many visitors to Orkney cross the Churchill Barriers. They come not to remember the English war leader, or to marvel at military engineering, but to visit the little Italian shrine which is a monument to hope and faith in exile.