Where it all started. Dark Peak Fell Runners HQ circa 1976
The Club Hut
The club hut is a old military hut moved across from the adjacent Redmires Camp where the concrete bases are still visible.
Redmires Camp was set up in 1910 as a training camp for Sheffield City ‘Pals’ Battalion who were preparing for trench warfare in World War One. When the Sheffield City Battalion went to join the battle of Pachendale, other military units moved into the camp. Typically each hut housed 30 soldiers. It later became a prisoner of war prison camp. During the Second World War it became Lodge Moor Camp for Italian Prisoners of War. It eventually held 11,000 prisoners and was Britain’s largest prison camp. By that time each hut held up to 70 prisoners. That would make it around 150 huts, a figure which had not been guessed at until recent research at the University of Sheffield was published. The huts were later removed and conifers were planted.
Writings and photograph courtesy of Mike Browell.