Girvan Hostel

Maidens and the Turnberry airfield

Turnberry airfield had first opened in 1917 and closed after the First World War. It was revived as an anti-aircraft landing ground in the 1930s and reopened during 1942, but the cramped ground between the shore and the hills made expansion impossible, and it closed in 1945. The Maidens road runs through the site. When Historic Environment Scotland visited in 2001, the runways were still extant, many other buildings survived and the former control tower was a private house; an earlier account of 1983 had recorded that most of the wartime buildings were demolished.

A local talk reported in 2026 put the number of airmen housed by the aerodrome complex and nearby Maidens at up to 7,000 at one time. An enthusiast history of the airfield adds that after the operational units left in November 1945, the accommodation was used for a time to house prisoners of war until 1946, after which most of it was cleared, and that the airfield was sold by the Ministry in 1949.

Whether the EVW hostel at Maidens occupied part of this accommodation, or another site altogether, is not established. The airfield history is given here as the setting, not as an identification of the hostel.

Hostels for European Voluntary Workers

The National Service Hostels Corporation, set up in 1941 to run hostels for war workers, had its powers extended in 1946 to include accommodation for European Voluntary Workers. Most Ukrainian EVWs arrived in the second half of 1947 and the first half of 1948; they were housed in hostels close to their work and signed an undertaking to work only as directed by the Ministry of Labour, a restriction from which they could apply for release after three years from 1 January 1951.

Kormylo notes that work locations were generally outside the camps and hostels, that men were restricted to forestry, farming or mining, and that in every Scottish camp the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain managed to register a branch with a chairperson, secretary, treasurer and cultural officer. Whether the Girvan hostel had such a branch, and what work its residents did, has not been found.

A pastoral visit to Maidens

In August–September 1948, the Ukrainian Orthodox periodical Brotherhood’s Letter printed a message thanking hostel managers and wardens who had recently welcomed the Very Reverend Ihor Hubarzhevsky. Maidens Hostel appears by name in its English-language list.

Hubarzhevsky was head of the General Council of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in Great Britain. His message thanked staff for their care of displaced Ukrainians. Published in both Ukrainian and English, it connected the residents’ religious life with the people managing their accommodation.

Building a dispersed church community

The same page encouraged Orthodox residents to organise locally: hostels with more than fifteen believers were to elect a parish council, while smaller groups were to choose a representative. This was a national organisational appeal, not evidence of Maidens’ population or proof that it had a separate church building.

Girvan and Maidens in the records

The surviving names are kept together here as related records from the same part of Ayrshire. The directory and map do not provide a street address that conclusively identifies the Girvan entry with a particular Maidens building. The 1948 notice directly documents Maidens and its pastoral visit.