During 1941/2, dedicated accommodation for personnel involved in the construction of Short Sunderland Planes at the White Cross Bay factory on Lake Windermere, was required. As a result, a model village to house 600 people was built at the nearby Troutbeck Bridge adjacent to Calgarth Hall. At the end of the war, after the factory had ceased production, several vacated homes were transformed to hostels and used to accommodate 300 relocated child Holocaust survivors ‘the Windermere boys’.

In order to identify the archaeological survival of the Calgarth Estate. Ground Penetrating Radar and Magnetometry Surveys were undertaken on the site followed by the excavation of a total of six trenches and three sample test-pits.

Typological analysis on the recovered artefacts suggests these have had a particular association with the survivors- providing a direct link to those children who convalesced at the Calgarth Estate after the war in 1945.