Watten is a small village in Caithness

Caithness

Caithness is a registration county, lieutenancy area and historic local government area of Scotland. The name was used also for the earldom of Caithness and the Caithness constituency of the Parliament of the United Kingdom . Boundaries are not identical in all contexts, but the Caithness area is...

, in the Highland

Highland (council area)

Highland is a council area in the Scottish Highlands and is the largest local government area in both Scotland and the United Kingdom as a whole. It shares borders with the council areas of Moray, Aberdeenshire, Perth and Kinross, and Argyll and Bute. Their councils, and those of Angus and...

 area of Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, on the main road

Road

A road is a thoroughfare, route, or way on land between two places, which typically has been paved or otherwise improved to allow travel by some conveyance, including a horse, cart, or motor vehicle. Roads consist of one, or sometimes two, roadways each with one or more lanes and also any...

 (A882

A882 road

The A882 road is entirely within Caithness in the Highland area of Scotland. It has a length of about and runs generally west/northwest from the A99 in the county town of Wick to the A9 in the Georgemas area....

-A9) between the county town

County town

A county town is a county's administrative centre in the United Kingdom or Ireland. County towns are usually the location of administrative or judicial functions, or established over time as the de facto main town of a county. The concept of a county town eventually became detached from its...

 of Wick and the burgh

Burgh

A burgh was an autonomous corporate entity in Scotland and Northern England, usually a town. This type of administrative division existed from the 12th century, when King David I created the first royal burghs. Burgh status was broadly analogous to borough status, found in the rest of the United...

 of Thurso

Thurso

-Facilities:Offices of the Highland Council are located in the town, as is the main campus of North Highland College, formerly Thurso College. This is one of several partner colleges which constitute the UHI Millennium Institute, and offers several certificate, diploma and degree courses from...

, about twelve kilometres (eight miles) west of Wick and close to Wick River and to Loch Watten

Loch Watten

Loch Watten is a loch in Caithness, Scotland in the River Wick drainage basin. The name is a tautology, consisting of the word "loch" and vatn, a Norse word meaning the very same, found in such names as "Þingvallavatn" and Myvatn in Iceland, and "Røssvatnet" and "Møsvatn" in Norway.It is well...

. The village is on The Far North

Far North Line

The Far North Line is a rural railway line entirely within the Highland area of Scotland, extending from Inverness to Thurso and Wick.- Route :...

 railway line but trains stopped calling at the village in 1960. The railway station

Watten railway station

Watten was a railway station located at the east end of Loch Watten, Highland between Halkirk and Wick, Scotland. It was one of a number of smaller stations on the Far North Line which were closed in 1960.- Sources :*...

 is now a private house.

The village is within the parish of Watten, which has the Parish of Bower to the north, that of Wick to the east, that of Latheron

Latheron

Latheron ) is a small village and civil parish in Caithness, in the Highland area of Scotland, centred on the junction of the A9 with the A99....

 to the south and that of Halkirk

Halkirk

Halkirk is a village on the River Thurso in Caithness, in the Highland council area of Scotland. From Halkirk the B874 road runs towards Thurso in the north and towards Georgemas in the east...

 to the west.

Loch Watten is the largest body of water in Caithness. The name of the village and loch appear to come from the Old Norse

Old Norse

Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....

 Vatn, meaning water or lake, and the loch is famous for its brown trout fishing. The local public house

Public house

A public house, informally known as a pub, is a drinking establishment fundamental to the culture of Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. There are approximately 53,500 public houses in the United Kingdom. This number has been declining every year, so that nearly half of the smaller...

 is also named "The Brown Trout" after the famous local produce.

Prisoner of war camp

A military camp was built in Watten during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, in early 1943, and at the end of the war this became POW Camp 165. This had been described as "Britain's most secretive prisoner of war camp" because many prominent Nazis were moved there from POW Camp 21 at Comrie

Comrie

Comrie is an affluent village and parish in the southern highlands of Scotland, towards the western end of the Strathearn district of Perth and Kinross, seven miles west of Crieff. The village has won the Royal Horticultural Society "Large Village Britain in Bloom Winner" in 2007 and 2010...

 in Perthshire

Perthshire

Perthshire, officially the County of Perth , is a registration county in central Scotland. It extends from Strathmore in the east, to the Pass of Drumochter in the north, Rannoch Moor and Ben Lui in the west, and Aberfoyle in the south...

. These prisoners included Gunter d'Alquen

Gunter d'Alquen

Gunter d'Alquen was Chief Editor of the SS weekly, Das Schwarze Korps the official newspaper of the Schutzstaffel , and commander of the SS-Standarte Kurt Eggers Gunter d'Alquen (October 24, 1910 - May 15, 1998) was Chief Editor of the SS weekly, Das Schwarze Korps ("The Black Corps") the...

, Himmler's

Heinrich Himmler

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...

 chief propagandist, leading U-boat

U-boat

U-boat is the anglicized version of the German word U-Boot , itself an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , and refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II...

 captain Otto Kretschmer

Otto Kretschmer

Flotilla Admiral Otto Kretschmer was a German U-boat commander in the Second World War and later an admiral in the Bundesmarine. From September 1939 until being captured in March 1941, he sank 47 ships, a total of 274,333 tons. For this he received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak...

, dubbed the "Wolf of the Atlantic", and SS-Sturmbannführer

Sturmbannführer

Sturmbannführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party equivalent to major, used both in the Sturmabteilung and the Schutzstaffel...

 Max Wünsche

Max Wünsche

Max Wünsche was a Obersturmbannführer in the Waffen-SS during World War II who was awarded the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves.-Early life:Max Wünsche was born on 20 April 1914 in Kittlitz...

, one of Hitler's

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

 top aides. The camp closed in 1948.

Notable people

Watten was the birth place of Alexander Bain

Alexander Bain (inventor)

Alexander Bain was a Scottish inventor and engineer who was first to invent and patent the electric clock. Bain installed the railway telegraph lines between Edinburgh and Glasgow.-Early life:...

, inventor of a type of pendulum-regulated electric clock and the fax machine. Bain is commemorated by a carved stone monument outside the village hall. The fax machine is referred to on this monument as "The Electric Printing Telegraph".