Crieff Hostel
Arrival and settlement
Crieff, Perthshire, Scotland · Postwar EVW accommodation, documented 1953
Crieff was one of the Perthshire locations where Ukrainian European Voluntary Workers were housed after reaching Britain. A Gazette notice of 1953 confirms that the E.V.W. Hostel, Crieff was still a residential address that year.
Introduction
Crieff Hostel is recorded as European Voluntary Worker accommodation in the Ukrainian settlement directory. The entry places it in Perthshire and the accompanying map includes Crieff among Scotland’s Ukrainian camp and hostel locations.
The directory was compiled by Peter Kormylo from lists held by the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain and the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Scotland. Kormylo describes an AUGB database of the camps and hostels where, in the late 1940s, Ukrainians formed formal branches of the association, and he located 43 such locations in Scotland. Crieff is entry 21 in his appended list of Scottish and northern English hostels that held significant numbers of ethnic Ukrainians.
Kormylo also describes what a directory entry implies. In every one of the Scottish camps, he writes, the association created a registered branch with a chairperson, secretary, treasurer and a cultural and educational officer who identified commemoration dates and arranged lectures or concerts for them. No branch report, minute book or news sheet from Crieff has been traced, so nothing is known of who held those posts here or what they organised.
Sources for this section
A history in dates
- 1940Wartime camps were set up along the Strathearn valley, including at Crieff.
- 1946 to 1948Polish Resettlement Corps units were stationed at Market Park Camp, Crieff and at Comrie near Crieff.
- 26 June 1947The Ministry of Labour reported that some 11,500 European Voluntary Workers had entered Britain since late April.
- PostwarCrieff is recorded as an EVW hostel in the Ukrainian accommodation directory.
- 1 January 1951European Voluntary Workers resident three years in Britain may apply for release from the restriction on their choice of employment.
- 22 June 1953A resident of the E.V.W. Hostel, Crieff died at Murray Royal Hospital, Perth.
- 6 November 1953The Edinburgh Gazette published the Crown notice giving the hostel as the deceased resident’s last address.
Sources for this section
The hostel record
The directory records the accommodation under the following name and locality.
Sources for this section
From displacement to employment
European Voluntary Worker was a British employment category. In a parliamentary answer on 26 June 1947, the Ministry of Labour described a recruitment scheme that had begun towards the end of April. Around 11,500 people had entered Britain by 21 June and approximately 3,900 had started work. Accommodation in holding camps before placement was publicly funded.
These are national figures. Crieff’s own directory entry identifies a hostel in that wider employment system, but supplies neither a local headcount nor a first arrival date.
The scheme’s obligations lasted. European Voluntary Workers were housed in hostels near their work and were paid at British rates, but were directed in their employment by the Ministry of Labour; only from 1 January 1951 could those who had been in Britain three years apply to be released from the restriction on their choice of work. A hostel still in use at Crieff in the middle of 1953 was therefore outliving the rule that had first filled it.
The hostel in 1953
In November 1953 the Queen’s and Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer, the Crown office that deals with the estates of people who die in Scotland without known heirs, published in the Edinburgh Gazette a list of estates that had fallen to the Crown. One entry gives E.V.W. Hostel, Crieff, Perthshire as the last address of a man who died at Murray Royal Hospital, Perth, on 22 June 1953.
The notice fixes the hostel as an operating address in the middle of 1953, six years after the EVW scheme began, and shows that at least one resident died without relatives who could be traced in Britain.
Sources for this section
Camps in Strathearn before the hostel
Crieff had military accommodation before the hostel existed. A Dunning reminiscence records that from 1940 camps were set up along the Strathearn valley at Auchterarder, Strathallan, Blackford and Crieff as part of the defence of the strath.
Between 1946 and 1948 units of the Polish Resettlement Corps were also stationed in the district. A list of army units in Polish Resettlement Corps camps places a Polish medical transport column at Market Park Camp, Crieff, and an infantry training centre at Comrie near Crieff. Photographs in the Imperial War Museums’ Prytyś collection record the Polish commander in chief, General Bór-Komorowski, visiting a school of infantry officer cadets in Crieff.
None of these sources says which camp, if any, became the EVW hostel, and the Polish Resettlement Corps was a separate scheme from the EVW programme. Places near Comrie are often given Crieff addresses, so a camp at Comrie must not be relabelled as the Crieff hostel. The building or site occupied by the E.V.W. Hostel, Crieff remains unidentified.
Military and resettlement sites recorded in and near Crieff
| Site | Period | Use | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Camp at Crieff | From 1940 | Wartime army camp along the strath | Dunning Parish Historical Society |
| Market Park Camp, Crieff | 1946 to 1948 | Polish Resettlement Corps medical transport column | PRC camps list |
| Comrie near Crieff | 1946 to 1948 | Polish Resettlement Corps infantry training centre | PRC camps list |
| E.V.W. Hostel, Crieff | Documented 1953 | Ukrainian European Voluntary Workers | Edinburgh Gazette |
Sources
- In which ways is the Ukrainian community in Scotland a diaspora?
Peter David Kormylo, University of Glasgow · 2021
Original directory printed 322–323 and map printed 100; archival lists attributed to AUGB and Ukrainian Catholic Church in Scotland. Printed pp 139–140 describe the AUGB database of camp and hostel sub-groups from which the list derives.
- European Voluntary Workers
UK Parliament, Hansard · 26 June 1947
Full original ministerial reply read; national figures are not Crieff resident counts.
- Notice of estates fallen to the Crown as ultimus haeres, page 580
The Edinburgh Gazette · 6 November 1953
Original page read: one entry gives E.V.W. Hostel, Crieff, Perthshire as the last address of a man who died at Murray Royal Hospital, Perth, on 22 June 1953. Name withheld on this page.
- Army units in Polish Resettlement Corps camps in the UK 1946–1948
Polish Resettlement Camps in the UK · Accessed 12 September 2026
Scotland section read: Market Park Camp, Crieff and Comrie near Crieff. A list of Polish army units, not a record of the EVW hostel.
- Prytyś Władysław Jacek Collection
Imperial War Museums · Accessed 12 September 2026
Catalogue description of negatives: General Bór-Komorowski visiting a School of Infantry Cadet Officers in Crieff. Polish forces only.
- The Army in Dunning during the Second World War
Dunning Parish Historical Society, Newsletter 22, reminiscence by Joe Taylor · January 1998
States that from 1940 camps were set up along the strath at Auchterarder, Strathallan, Blackford and Crieff. No detail on the Crieff camp.
- European Voluntary Workers
Ukrainians in the United Kingdom Online Encyclopaedia · Accessed 13 September 2026
Records that EVWs lived in hostels near their work at British rates of pay under Ministry of Labour direction, and that from 1 January 1951 those resident three years could apply for release from the employment restriction. National, not specific to Crieff.
- The Edinburgh Gazette, 6 November 1953, page 580
The Gazette (TSO, on behalf of His Majesty’s Stationery Office) · 6 November 1953
Page facsimile carrying the Queen’s and Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer’s list of estates fallen to the Crown as ultimus haeres, including Wasyl Hodu, late of E.V.W. Hostel, Crieff, Perthshire. Crown copyright, reproduced under the Open Government Licence version 3.0; The Gazette notes that the licence does not extend to the re-use of personal data.
Last researched 13 September 2026