Earthwork record MAB44154 - DYCE QUARRIES

Remains of quarries, depicted on the OS 1st and 2nd edition maps, and site of a conscientious objectors' work camp in World War I.

Remains of quarries, depicted on the OS 1st and 2nd edition maps, and site of a conscientious objectors' work camp in World War I. The 2nd edition depicts at least three buildings and two cranes as well as the quarry pits. From 1916 Conscientious Objectors from all over Britain were brought to work at this quarry, on construction of material for what was described as the Dyce road. The information about this lies in West Register House, part of the NAS in Edinburgh, the file was closed until 1994 but is now open for public consultation. After it was opened there have been attempts to write a history of this episode. The publicity which surrounded this suggested that the camp was a particularly hard place and emphasised the fact that there was at least one death of a conscientious objector here. Conscientious objectors were men who had been conscripted but refused to follow military orders. Consequently they were tried by a district court martial and sentenced to a prison term in a civil prison (if they were serving officers of some standing then they were subject to a different process, but it is only conscriptees that need concern us here). The sentences varied from judge to judge but were generally for 112 days, or 6 months. The objectors were then taken in front of a tribunal which upon examination would decide if they were Conscientious Objectors or not. If they were then they were given conditional pardons, conditional on that they followed the work programme and rules of the Committee on the Employment of Conscientious Objectors. From the correspondence of this committee it was eventually decided that those with pardons should be put to work on roads, the alternative being what was described as 'low level clerical work in the Inland Revenue'. Work began at Dyce Quarry in September 1916 with 8 or 9 men under the direction of Mr. Gray, a roads engineer from Dyce, effectively the contractor for the works. Eventually the camp got up to full strength with about 250 men, mostly from all over Scotland and England. Things came to a head in October 1916 when William L. Roberts of Bredburry in Stockport died at the camp of influenza. This led to something of a media frenzy, with a number of unfavourable comments on the camp, although the Aberdeen Daily Journal remained fully on the side of the Government in this case. They reported that the Conscientious Objectors were not popular around Dyce as many were Communist and openly proclaimed their politics around the village. A number of bodies and organisations complained to the government about the treatment of these men and claimed it was inhuman and that an internal medical report had slammed the camp and its conditions. The report provides the fullest insight into what was going on. The report was commissioned before the death of Roberts in response to a number of cases of Diptheria in Dyce. The report was produced by Dr Dittmar on 8 September 1916, he was the Medical Officer for LGB. The relevant parts of the report are given here: 'The camp is situated on gently slopping ground in open country with a southern exposure at the foot of a large heap of stones.' CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS's break stones, take them by cart to stone crushing machines and then load the final product onto trucks. [They were to have]Ample clean water 2 foot deep trench, lined with lime dug for toiletry purposes, with a board. 250 men in the camp, 27 bell tents for 10 men each, each tent has a shallow trench cut around to allow water to run off. 2 large marquees (dinning and recreation rooms) 1 small marquee (Gray's office) 'For each man there is provided a water proof draw sheet to lay on the ground; also a mattress, a paliasse and a bolster filled by the men themselves with dry straw. In addition, the men were using some wood, which had been provided for burning, to put on the ground below the draw sheets. Each man also has 3 large brown blankets provided by the military authorities from store in Stirling. . I understand that soldiers have neither straw mattresses nor wooden flooring in their tents. To this extent, therefore, the men at Dyce camp are more advantageously situated than soldiers. On going into the tents I discovered that they were worn somewhat at some of the seams. In wet weather water will therefore tend to get in, this will, however, happen in soldiers tents as well. The men, however, do not by any means all sleep in the bell tents provided; a number, some 60 or thereby sleep, in the granary and stables of Standing Stones Farm about a quarter of a mile from the camp. Others some 20 to 30 make use of various dilapidated cottages near the camp as sleeping quarters. These cottages are windowless and doorless, and their roofs are defective, but the ground floor rooms have a concrete floor and though the walls are damp there are fire places; and by cleaning up the floors and hanging water proof sheets, etc., to keep out wind and rain, fairly comfortable sleeping quarters have been made out of these uninhabitable cottages. Certainly the men are likely to be drier there in rainy weather than in the bell tents. I am informed that a number of men live in lodgings in Dyce village.' Men receive daily full field service rations from the Army Service Corps at Balnagask. Daily rations consist of: 1lb bread; lb meat; 4 oz bacon; 3 oz cheese; 5/8 oz tea; oz jam; 3 oz sugar; oz salt; 1/20 oz mustard; 1/36 oz pepper; lb veg, milk and butter. 'The men appeared healthy when I saw them, with the exception of some three or four who were suffering from sore throats, and feverish colds.' One with scarlet fever sent to Summerfield Fever Hospital. Conclusion, underlined in blue: 'The general sanitary condition of the camp at Dyce maybe regarded as satisfactory. The health of the men is not likely to suffer from living in tents as long as the weather keeps dry.' The only other time the camp came to national attention was when Guy Alfred Aldred escaped by the cunning means of buying a ticket to London from Dyce and hopping on the train. In fact the wrong train a day early but the station master allowed him to travel, even knowing who he was. Following the negative publicity surrounding the camp in 1916 Ramsay MacDonald visited in November 1916 and ordered that it be shut down. Other camps were, however, still in use throughout Scotland but had not been tainted with the bad publicity surrounding the camp at Dyce.

BBC NEWS WEBSITE, , BBC NEWS WEBSITE, 03/03/2014 (Bibliographic reference). SAB3784.

WALKER, J, 2011, DYCE WORK CAMP, PUBLIC OPINION AND CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS IN NORTH EAST SCOTLAND, 1916 (Bibliographic reference). SAB3429.

Author unknown, n.d., TIMES, 19/05/1999 (Bibliographic reference). SAB1926.

Record last edited

Jan 13 2021 2:57PM