During World War II enemy prisoners of war were often sent to work on British farms, where they enjoyed a degree of freedom.

Some of these farms were in Borehamwood and Elstree, and there was a small camp near Station Road, possibly at the site now occupied by the town's fire research station.

German prisoners at the camp spent some of their time making model ships, which they put in old coffee bottles, and sold to raise money for cigarettes.

There is no way of knowing how many of these ships in bottles still exist, but Dennis Harrison, a former Borehamwood resident who now lives in Wales, owns one of them, which he is lending to the town's Community History Project exhibition in Drayton Road.

"I got the ship from my aunt's house. She lived at the top of Station Road.

"I don't know where she got it. I'd imagine they went around Borehamwood trying to sell them, or asked the guards to do it."

Mr Harrison, who was born in 1936, was a child at the time of the war. He said despite the chaos of his formative years, he enjoyed growing up in Borehamwood during the war.

"I wouldn't say it was scary for us, the children used to enjoy it.

"We used to go out collecting shrapnel and bits of incendiary bombs, it was all a lot of fun for us," he said.