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Sicilian Culture: News & Views

Orkney's Italian Chapel

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.

To brighten up the cheerless camp of Nissen huts the Italians made paths with the one thing they had in abundance - concrete - and planted flowerbeds. Domenico Chiocchetti made the statue from barbed wire and cement, to preside over the camp square. In 1943 a long Nissen hut was provided 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, as well as two Cherubim and two Seraphim lower down, 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. The painted vaults in the ceiling are especially well executed.

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 the help of Bruttapasta, 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!

Mr. Chiocchetti returned to Orkney in 1960 and did much to restore the internal paint-work of the chapel, and in 1961 his home town, Moena, near Bolzano in the Dolomites, gifted a wayside shrine, a carved figure of Christ erected outside the Chapel, to the people of Orkney. More recently much exterior work has been done to restore and preserve the Chapel and the memorial statue for the future.

The Italian Chapel is now one of the most-visited monuments in Orkney and is a fitting memorial to those lost in wartime. Orkney's historical sites span nearly 6,000 years from the First Settlers to the present and the Chapel provides a sharp contrast to the older sites. Signor Chiocchetti, in addressing the Orcadian people, said, "The chapel is yours, to love and preserve".

In recent years several of the ex-prisoners and their families have returned to visit their chapel. In 1995, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Barriers, a group returned and a reception was held in their honour by Orkney Islands Council. Hopefully this connection between Italy and Orkney will endure long after memories of World War II have faded.

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 our little Italian shrine which is a monument to hope and faith in exile.

Courtesy of:
© Copyright Charles Tait www.charles-tait.co.uk
Italian Chapel www.homecoming.co.uk/italian/html/chapel.html

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