Returning to the Orkney islands after a gap of seven years there were many places I was anxious to revisit. Right at the top of my list was the Italian Chapel, an unlikely outpost of the Roman Catholic Church located on a remote, windswept Scottish island. It is serenely beautiful, and the story of its creation is truly inspirational.

Scapa Flow, a body of water sheltered between several of Orkney’s islands, is one of the world’s great natural harbours. As such it was the UK’s foremost naval base during the First and Second World Wars.

To give added protection to naval vessels anchored there it was agreed late in 1939 that barriers should be constructed to block off the four eastern entrances to it, while simultaneously linking up several islands with a causeway. The man who made that decision was Winston Churchill, at the time the First Sea Lord and later the UK’s victorious wartime Prime Minister. The barriers now bear his name.

From a military perspective it was a thoroughly sensible decision, given that German submarines had proved themselves adept at sneaking into Scapa Flow and attacking British warships. However, constructing the barriers was more problematic, not least because of a shortage of local manpower to do the heavy lifting.

The solution, it became apparent, was to send in some Italians. The Italian army had been having a difficult time in North Africa. Many thousands of its troops had been captured, so sending a few hundred of these wretched captives to Orkney to help with the construction of the Churchill Barriers must have seemed like an opportunity too good to miss.

And so it was that around 500 Italians found themselves in Camp 60 on the tiny (40ha / 98 acres), uninhabited Orkney island of Lambholm. It was not a pleasant experience, and not just because – as prisoners of war – the men were expected to put in long days of hard physical labour with no prospect of a decent meal, a glass of wine or female company at the end of it:

“The little island could hardly have appeared more desolate: bare, foggy, exposed to the wind and heavy rain. The camp consisted of thirteen dark, empty huts, and mud.”

Domenico Chiocchetti, quoted in The Italian Chapel: Orkney’s Sanctuary of Peace

From the end of September 1943, the prisoners’ spiritual needs were overseen by a camp priest, Padre Gioachino Giacobazzi. It was he who suggested that their welfare might be better served if their British guards enabled the provision of a chapel. To their credit the British agreed to this, allowing the prisoners to take over – and bolt together – two Nissen huts for this purpose.

Wikipedia tells us that a Nissen hut “is a prefabricated steel structure originally for military use, especially as barracks, made from a half-cylindrical skin of corrugated iron”. This doesn’t sound like a promising starting point for the creation of a place of worship, but what the Italian prisoners achieved with their huts was extraordinary.

Having bolted together the two huts end-to-end, the first task was to ensure they could withstand Orkney’s challenging weather. This was achieved by applying wire ‘bolster’ nets and copious quantities of concrete along the whole length of the structure. Once they were sure the exterior of the huts was weathertight, the prisoners could move on to line the interior of the corrugated walls with plasterboard. This created a smooth surface capable of being transformed into something resembling a “normal” chapel.

Fortunately for the success of the project, one of the prisoners was a talented artist with relevant training and experience. Domenico Chiocchetti was born in May 1910, the youngest of 12 children. Coming from a poor family he had no opportunity to attend art college, but instead managed to get an apprenticeship to train as a church painter. The skills he developed at this time were invaluable on Orkney, where he came up with the design of the chapel and its artwork, and supervised its internal decoration..

Chiocchetti was personally responsible for painting the exquisite sanctuary end of the chapel, including the altarpiece which he based on Nicolo Barabino’s Madonna of the Olives. When he went off to war Chiocchetti’s mother gave him a prayer card bearing a copy of Barabino’s work, and it was this image that he used as his inspiration for the painting. The Madonna is pictured holding the Christ Child, who has an olive branch in His hand. Appropriately, given the circumstances in which Chiocchetti created this piece, the Latin phrase that surrounds them reads ‘Regina Pacis Ora Pro Nobis’ – ‘Mother of Peace Pray For Us’.

Other tradesmen also played an important part in the creation of the chapel, including Giuseppe Palumbi, a blacksmith, and Domenico Buttapasta, a cement worker. The prisoners used whatever materials were to hand to further the project: the altar and altar rail, for example, were made out of concrete left over from work on the barriers, lamp holders were made out of corned beef tins and the font was fashioned from the inside of a car exhaust covered in a layer of concrete!

Chiocchetti was conscious that the ugly appearance of the exterior of the Nissen hut detracted from his creative endeavours, and gave no clue to the beauty that lay inside. Once again, concrete provided the answer, with the prisoners using it to fashion a beautiful façade, complete with bell-tower. Today, without knowledge of the chapel’s history, it would be all but impossible to guess at its humble military origins.

Upon its completion, the chapel undoubtedly enhanced the spiritual lives of the prisoners incarcerated at Camp 60. But just as important, perhaps, its creation gave the men who built it and worshipped within it a sense of purpose and renewed hope. At what must have been the bleakest time in their young lives, the chapel offered them some reassurance that there is more to life than warfare, and that with hard work and a positive outlook nothing is impossible. Here is how one of the prisoners put it:

Nights were our worst enemy. Long nights when thoughts went back home to those we loved…Only thinking of something more nobler, more elevated, could we find inner peace and hope. So the tiny chapel came gradually into existence.”

Bruno Volpi, a POW at Camp 60, quoted in The Italian Chapel: Orkney’s Sanctuary of Peace

Orkney’s Italian Chapel is a remarkable building, all the more so for being tucked away on a remote, tiny Scottish island where, at first glance, it simply does not belong. Its serene, uncomplicated beauty and the story of how it came to be should give us all cause for hope.