Bela River Hostel

The camp on the river

The camp stood on former farmland about two kilometres south-east of Milnthorpe, at grid reference SD 513 803, beside the hamlet of Whassett in Beetham parish. It occupied roughly eleven acres requisitioned from the Dallam Estate. Roger Thomas’s 2003 survey for English Heritage lists it as number 104, Beela River (Bela River) Camp, a German Working Camp.

Italians, then Germans

An International Red Cross inspection on 3 June 1943 found Italian prisoners and a capacity of 750, and in 1944 the camp was listed as an Italian Labour Battalion under Western Command. By 1946 it was a German working camp under Major E. Selby.

Foreign Office re-education visits recorded the strength. In August 1946 there were 1,242 other ranks and three officers across the headquarters, hostels at Borwick, Sedbergh and Silecroft, and billets; by January 1948 the total was 830. The camp closed that month and many of those left went to Merry Thought Camp 76. These are prisoner-of-war figures, not hostel figures.

Work and camp life

A local biography of the Reverend Alexander MacLeod Murray describes about 200 prisoners and work on farms, in quarries, at a milk factory and on roads. These are prison-camp figures, not Ukrainian hostel totals.

The camp library grew from 1,250 books in early 1947 to 2,888 by January 1948. There were language and science classes, a theatre group, an orchestra and football matches with Camp 76. Morale was reported as low at nearly every visit.

Friendships with Beetham

Murray moved to Beetham in January 1946. He treated the prisoners as parishioners, encouraged invitations into local homes and supported concerts and German-language worship. The camp’s Lutheran and Catholic congregations shared a hut chapel. Erich Schmidt, a German chaplain, also travelled to other camps by motorcycle.

Heribert Moser helped with the parish magazine; Gabriel Fabian showed films in neighbouring camps. Letters preserved by Murray’s family record friendships that continued after prisoners left. Bruno Baumann made a crucifix and Christmas crib associated with the camp’s thanks to Murray and the parish.

Matthew Barry Sullivan’s history of German prisoners in Britain records that Murray, finding Camp 104 within his parish, asked Beetham to become a little sanctuary for its inmates.

The camp newspaper

On 4 January 1947 the camp issued the first number of Die Neue Zeit. The Wiener Holocaust Library holds this eleven-page German-language newspaper, edited by Rudolph Sehm and circulated internally. Its catalogue records an edition of 120 copies. This gives a specific glimpse of organised publishing inside Camp 104.

The re-education reports trace the print run further, to 200 copies a fortnight in early 1947 and 250 by that summer.

A handmade gift

Beetham parish dates the gift of its Nativity scene to Christmas 1946. German prisoners at Bela carved and painted its figures as a thank-you for the welcome they had received. In its 2018 parish profile, the church reported that the scene remained in good condition and was still regularly used.

Sullivan quotes its dedication: the German prisoners of Beela River Camp gave the stable and figures, made by Bruno Baumann and his assistant Gabriel Fabian, in gratitude for the brotherhood shown them. It was signed at Christmas 1946 by Baumann, the camp leader Werner Janicke and the camp padre Erich Schmidt.

The photograph reproduced here comes from that parish profile. The figures are an object made by the camp’s German prisoners; they belong to that part of Bela’s history, alongside the later Ukrainian hostel connection.

The YMCA hostel

The postwar directory names YMCA Hostel, Bela River, near Milnethorpe, Westmorland. Its placement under accommodation used by Ukrainians provides the explicit Ukrainian connection. The name links the hostel to the former camp, but the directory does not assign its Ukrainian residents the biographies or activities of the earlier German prisoners.

The WW2 prisoner-of-war camps project independently records that after the camp closed the site was used as an agricultural hostel for displaced persons.

The site in later years

On 21 January 1953 a public inquiry at Milnthorpe heard objections from Westmorland County Council and others to a proposal to turn the camp into an open prison. The Westmorland Gazette reported on 30 May 1953 that the Home Secretary had decided the scheme should proceed, for a temporary period.

That period lasted about twenty years. On 2 August 1974 the Gazette reported that Roy Jenkins had named Bela River among open establishments to be closed; it then held 195 inmates and 60 staff. A written answer in 1983 confirmed closure in 1974 with a capacity of 250 places and sale of the site in 1980.

In April 2003 a parliamentary question asked whether the former camp would become accommodation for asylum seekers. The Home Office replied that there were currently no plans to use it for that purpose, while adding that it would consider the accommodation if offered. That records a proposal discussed, not a reopened reception centre. The Wings School now occupies the site.