Women prisoners of war

When English Heritage unveiled its award winning permanent exhibition on prisoners of war at Portchester Castle in 2017, (https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/about/search-news/portchester-castles-prisoner-of-war-stories-revealed/ ) an important chapter of its history was left out: the experiences of women and children held as prisoners of war at the castle. Exhibition panels and materials had been created to tell their stories but budget constraints led to their removal.

This overlooked aspect of Portchester's history is now the focus of Abigail Coppins' PhD research, which examines the lives of the over 100 women and children who were brought to Britain in 1796 as prisoners of war from the Caribbean. A poster for this research, created for an English Heritage conference in 2018, presented some of the early findings.

The common perception of British prisoner-of-war depots during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars as exclusively male spaces is being challenged by the evidence from Portchester which reveals the presence of women and children in these spaces. Their names appear in prison registers, and, as with the male prisoners of war, not all were white individuals.

Examining the prisoner-of-war records offers a deeper insight into women’s experiences during war, disrupting traditional narratives that frequently overlook their roles in historical accounts of conflict. Unlike research centred on women’s participation in combat or their contributions on the home front, Portchester and the other British prisoner-of-war depots of the 18th century, illuminate the varied realities women faced—ranging from solitary travellers to wives and children of soldiers—placing their stories within broader conversations about the effects of war on non-combatant communities, including those from the global majority.

The women and children from the Caribbean who were held at Portchester Castle provided inspiration for the play The Ancestors by Lakesha Arie-Angelo which was filmed at Portchester in 2021 (see Freedom and Revolution: The Ancestors) and the digital trail War and Resistance in the Caribbean by SV2G for St Paul’s Cathedral (https://www.stpauls.co.uk/war-and-resistance-in-caribbean-monuments-st-pauls).