
The most visited place in Orkney is not the Ring of Brodgar or Skara Brae or the magnificent St Magnus Cathedral. It is a tiny chapel dating from the Second World War, built out of tin and cardboard. It is estimated that around 85,000 people a year cross the concrete threshold of the little church and peer into the unlit interior. It is a very special place indeed.
Barely a few weeks into the war, German U-Boat 47, captained by Gunther Prien, entered Scapa Flow, the home base of the British fleet. Prien fired on the Royal Oak, flagship of the fleet, and she sank in fewer than 15 minutes – from a complement of 1200 men and boys, 833 lost their lives.
As well as being a terrible tragedy, the sinking of the Royal Oak on 14 October 1939 demonstrated that Scapa Flow was far from impregnable. The blockships, booms and nets were insufficient defence against enemy attack. First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, devised a plan whereby the eastern approaches to Scapa Flow would be blocked permanently by concrete barriers. This phenomenal engineering project took 4 years to complete, and the result was four great causeways; now known as the Churchill Barriers, they link Orkney Mainland and the South Isles of Lamb Holm, Glimps Holm, Burray and South Ronaldsay.
Building the barriers was a massive undertaking and the work was done by construction company Balfour Beatty. To begin with the work force was British, but it became clear very quickly that many more men were needed, so Churchill proposed using Prisoner of War labour. Whilst the Geneva Convention prevents prisoners from being put to war work, there is no law against them undertaking civilian labour – and the construction of four ‘causeways’ was deemed to be a civilian project and nothing to do with military strategy.
Thus it was that over 1000 Italian POWs, captured in North Africa, were brought to the tiny islands of Orkney, installed in purpose-built prison camps, and put to work casting huge concrete blocks. The Italians, far from home, living in concrete huts on an uninhabited island and working long arduous days, set about making the best of their situation. They organised plays and concert parties, and planted the ground around the huts with flowers and vegetables; but their spiritual needs were not being met, and a request for a place to worship was addressed by the provision of two corrugated iron Nissen huts. They were cold and bare and joyless.
One of the prisoners, Domenico Chiocchetti, painted the Madonna and Child above the altar, based on a Renaissance altarpiece. Palumbi forged a beautiful rood screen out of scrap iron, and Buttapasta fashioned an altar from concrete. The other prisoners were soon caught up in the creative endeavour, and their imagination knew no bounds! They painted astonishing trompe l’oeil designs on the walls, to make them look like tiles and carved stone, when in fact they are nothing more than plasterboard and scrounged paint. The lamps are made from bully beef tins and the shaft of the font is a truck spring encased in concrete. The whole place is created from scrap – even the bell in the belfry was made of cardboard for the first official photograph.
There is much more to say about this remarkable place, and stories abound about the people, the ingenuity, the return of Chiochetti in the 1960s, the subsequent friendship between Orkney and a small town in northern Italy called Moena. But there is one particular story that I want to share.
Two years ago, in my capacity as occasional tour guide, I took a coachful of English visitors to the Italian Chapel. We had spent the day together and visited many places, including the Ring of Brodgar, Skara Brae and the Cathedral. The chapel was the last stop on the itinerary before we headed for the ferry. I had told them the story of the Royal Oak, the building of the barriers and the Italian POWs. We then pulled up at the chapel. They looked, we spoke, and folk took photos and left donations. As the group began to trickle back to the coach, one lady stayed behind to tell me a story.
The lady came from Lincolnshire, and had married young. Her husband had died in his 60s and her children were grown up and had moved away, so she had thrown herself into village activities, joining clubs and societies and making many friends. Amongst them was an old Italian gentleman who had a farm only a few miles from where she lived. They became very close and he told her that he had come to Britain as a prisoner during the war, and had worked on the mighty Churchill Barriers in Orkney. He also told her about a little chapel that he had helped to decorate. The gentleman spoke often about Orkney, and as their relationship deepened and they fell in love, the old couple decided to take a holiday there to visit the chapel.
The pair looked at brochures and made plans, and even managed to get hold of a TV film about the chapel, so the lady could get an idea of what it looked like. Six months before the trip, the old Italian gentleman died, so he never got to see the chapel again. But the lady, heartbroken as she was, decided that she would go to Orkney herself. She booked a place on a group coach holiday visiting the islands, and now here she was, standing in the chapel in front of me, telling this story. She looked around her and said ‘He’s here. He’s all around me, I can feel him,’ and the tears started to pour down her cheeks. Everybody else had left the chapel and we stood with our arms around each other and cried. After a few minutes we pulled ourselves together, and headed back to the coach with very red eyes! She told me too that she had not intended to tell me the story, but that she was moved by what I had said about the Italians and wanted to share her little part in the tale. I am very glad she did.
Last year a book was published called The Italian Chapel – it is a fictionalised version of the Italians’ story written by Philip Paris, who became interested in the chapel after visiting Orkney on his honeymoon. Philip did a huge amount of research for the book, contacting many of the surviving POWs, and he has plans to publish a non-fiction book later this year. We have corresponded regularly, and I told him the tale of the lady on the coach. At the time, it did not seem appropriate to ask her name, or demand more details – I just felt so privileged to be there with her. Philip has asked my permission to use the story, and he has started the process of trying to find her, placing adverts and articles in Lincolnshire newspapers. He has said, and I am sure he is right, that there must be hundreds of stories such as mine out there, and we will never know them all.
But this story will live on, because I tell it to every group that I take to the Italian Chapel; and I’ve now told it to you.

Tags: Churchill Barriers, Italian Chapel, Orkney