Infrared image of the Tower at Sissinghurst Castle. ©NTPL/Rod Edwards
A new exhibition at Sissinghurst Castle tells the stories of the French prisoners held there during the Seven Year’s War (1756-1763). These eerie infrared images seem somehow apropriate as an illustration of the dark flipside of this beautiful place.
Infrared image of a door handle at Sissinghurst. ©NTPL/Rod Edwards
In the exhibition the little-known history of Sissinghurst as a prison camp will be told in the prisoners’ own words, found in their letters home and in trial records.
Infrared image of the courtyard range. ©NTPL/Rod Edwards
Sissinghurst had been leased to the government by its then owner, Sir Horace Mann, for use as an internment centre for about 3,000 captured French sailors. It was a harsh place even by eighteenth-century standards.
Naive painting depicting the killing of Bastien Baillie at Sissinghurst.
On 11 July 1761 a soldier of the Kent Militia, John Bramston, fired into a group of prisoners without warning. As prisoner Arsille Coilou later testified: “I was walking with the man Bastien Baillie who was killed in the Garden. The sentry beyond the moat advanced two or three steps. He fired, and the man fell.”
Infrared image of the Tower seen through an arched doorway. ©NTPL/Rod Edwards
The incident, depicted in the naïve painting that I posted about earlier, eventually led to an investigation of conditions at Sissinghurst. Poignantly, the word ‘castle’ was only added to Sissinghurst’s name at around this time, as the prisoners called their place of incarceration the ‘château de Sissinghurst’.
The exhibition is open from the beginning of July, Fridays to Tuesdays, 10:30 am until 4:30 pm.
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