# Cultybraggan, Perthshire, Scotland, Dec 09



## spacepunk (Dec 6, 2009)

Just a quick visit with smellycat as it was bloody baltic and a few cars were nearby. This used to be a PoW camp, but is now used as an allotment area and is up for auction as a future development site.


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## Cruachan (Dec 6, 2009)

spacepunk said:


> Just a quick visit with smellycat as it was bloody baltic and a few cars were nearby. This used to be a PoW camp, but is now used as an allotment area and is up for auction as a future development site.



Well, that place hasn't changed a lot in forty something years. Spent many a happy night there in my Army days. Best approach to the place was to get rat arsed as soon after arrival as possible and stay that way till you left. What a shithole! Are any of the original lavatory blocks still there? They were pretty unique, and were known as "the magic flutes".

J


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## Smellycat (Dec 6, 2009)

oh no, my identity has been revealed!!!! need to go back for a visit in the summer

ps...and yes it was a UFO !


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## spacepunk (Dec 6, 2009)

Cruachan said:


> Well, that place hasn't changed a lot in forty something years. Spent many a happy night there in my Army days. Best approach to the place was to get rat arsed as soon after arrival as possible and stay that way till you left. What a shithole! Are any of the original lavatory blocks still there? They were pretty unique, and were known as "the magic flutes".
> 
> J



Don't know mate, we didn't delve far enough. But a summer visit will hopefully unravel some more stuff.


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## the_historian (Dec 7, 2009)

Nice to see the place again. 
Cruachan,
the original latrines _are_ still there.

A bit of info.
Built 1942 as Camp #21, there was a twin camp called Cowden about a mile down the road towards the town, but that's long gone. Being in Scotland, the camp was used to house "Black" (ie diehard) Nazis, and is mostly remembered for the December 1944 murder of a "White" prisoner called Felix Rosterberg who was mistakenly sent to this camp. The other prisoners thought he was a spy and murdered him, several being hung in 1945. The rifle ranges were built in the 70s on the site of the blocks where the murder took place.
The camp was disbanded after the murder, and passed back to the army as a training camp. My old man spent many a cold weekend there with the Terries in the '50s.
There were originally four compounds in the camp- one each for Army, Navy, Air Force and SS, with the guards' one being outside.
A nuclear bunker was built in the camp in the late 80s and still exists, though it's permanently closed and apparently flooded. Part of the camp still has the original wartime layout of the Nissen huts, and was scheduled by Historic Scotland.It's _something_ along the lines of three huts being erected, then the three behind being at right angles to them and so on.


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## Smellycat (Dec 7, 2009)

Thanks for the info. My parents stay about a mile from the camp and their address is Cowden Way. I wander if its named after the other camp? I'll need to do some research.


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## undeterredham (Dec 8, 2009)

Those pics bring back some memories. I spent a lot of time there as a cadet (where I met my fiancee incidentally
).

I have actually been inside the front door of the bunker, way back when. Was very dark, very damp, and absolutely stinking. Not to mention scared the sh!t out of me when I was 14!!!!

I'm glad its shut, or I would have undoubtetly spent some time there in recent years (I'm a serving TA member). Gladly settle for Barry Butlins instead.


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## cozone (Dec 9, 2009)

Looks interesting though a bit dreich. Is the bunker still there??


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## escortmad79 (Dec 9, 2009)

The cludgies are still there, the bunker is still there & the ROC Post is still there.

I've still got my pics to sort & upload from when I went on the doors open day


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## Cruachan (Dec 9, 2009)

escortmad79 said:


> The cludgies are still there



Those shithouses were amazing. The cistern was at one end of the hut and, when it flushed, a sort of mini tidal wave used to sweep along the main pipe from one end to the other. The outlet pipe was only about half the diameter of the main pipe and, trust me, you did *not* want to be sitting in the end cubicle when the tidal wave with all it's floaty bits tried to get out the narrow outlet.

A favourite trick among the cognoscenti was to make a paper boat, set fire to it, and put in the pipe just before the cistern flushed. This was particularly effective when the place had a good number of customers. That was all good clean (not) fun, until some bright bastard made an extra large boat and stuck a thunder-flash in it. Shit all over Perthshire!



J


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## TARTAN23 (Jan 5, 2010)

I remember this camp when i first joined 15 Para in the early 80's, bleak, cold and wet... both in the camp and on the field firing ranges!! If i remember correctly i think the book, For Fuhrer and Fatherland: SS Murder and Mayhem in Wartime Britain has a chapter on the camp, or mentions it?

http://www.secretscotland.org.uk/index.php/Secrets/Cultybraggan

Regards,
Dave


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