Hallmuir

From wartime camp to Ukrainian chapel

Historic Environment Scotland identifies the site as 68 Working Camp at Halmuir Farm. German and Italian prisoners had occupied it before the Ukrainians arrived. The listing estimates that the early-1940s camp originally contained 40 buildings and dates the surviving chapel hut to 1942. Italian prisoners had already worshipped in the building; its Ukrainian occupants subsequently furnished and decorated it for their own use.

The camp stood about a mile and a half south of Lockerbie and was built in 1942 to hold 450 German and Italian prisoners. Those men were repatriated after the war, and by 1947 the huts stood empty. Later that year the site became home to more than 400 Ukrainian men.

From Rimini to Lockerbie

The men reached Scotland from the Ukrainian camp at Rimini in Italy. The British Cabinet decided on 1 April 1947 to bring the former soldiers of the Galicia Division to the United Kingdom, and about 8,570 of them were shipped from Venice during May and June, together with seventeen nurses and a few civilian relatives. The troopship India Victory docked at Glasgow on 15 May 1947, and a party of the men was sent on to Hallmuir.

Accounts of the size of that party differ. The chapel’s own leaflet and the local heritage accounts speak of more than 400 men, while one published feature puts the number at 450. The memorial cross at the camp entrance carries the date 27 May 1947.

A 2026 local news report gives the number of Ukrainians who arrived at Hallmuir in 1947 as 463, the same figure Krawec recorded at or near Lockerbie in July 1948. The report describes a different sequence of status from the published camp history: it states that the men were classed as surrendered enemy personnel for two years, until 1949, that they were then offered three-year contracts to work in the local forests and farms, and that they were released in 1951. The two accounts cannot be reconciled from the sources read here.

Making a place of worship

Inside the prefabricated hut, the men worked with the materials available to them. Shell fragments became candlesticks, tent fabric became banners, and a penknife was used to carve a small cathedral for the altar. Historic Environment Scotland records paintings made by prisoners, an altar screen and a blue ceiling patterned with gold stars. These details preserve the work of individuals whose creativity transformed an ordinary camp building. The chapel’s own visitor leaflet identifies worship as Ukrainian Greek Catholic and describes both its original adaptation for that rite and later Greek Catholic services.

The hut had already been used by the Italian prisoners as a place of worship. The Ukrainians rebuilt and decorated it so that they could celebrate in their own Greek Catholic rite, and Greek Catholic services are still held there, drawing worshippers from across Scotland. The chapel is one of only two prisoner-of-war chapels surviving in Scotland from the Second World War, the other being the Italian Chapel on Lamb Holm in Orkney.

Work and life in the camp

The Ministry of Agriculture put the men to work on farms and in forestry around Annandale. Photographs displayed in the chapel record a tractor group, camp drivers and the camp chauffeurs photographed with the commandant, which shows how far the daily routine had moved from guarded confinement.

The same collection records the camp’s own social life: the first Hallmuir gala day in 1947, entertainment at it by a Ukrainian mandolin trio, a Christmas party in 1947, a camp football team, and the blessing of the waters at the Feast of Jordan in 1948. One man carried apple seeds with him from Rimini, and the trees grown from them still stand beside the memorial.

Work and the transition to civilian life

Roman Krawec’s account places Hallmuir within the movement of former Galicia Division personnel from Italy to Britain in May–June 1947. It records 463 men at or near Lockerbie in July 1948. The same account dates release from prisoner-of-war status and admission to the European Voluntary Workers scheme to August–October 1948. Camps housing these men then became civilian hostels. Their subsequent freedom to change employment and find private accommodation developed over several years.

Lockerbie was one of eight places named in that July 1948 distribution, and the smallest of the named camps except for a residual group. The largest were Hempton in Norfolk with 1,682 men and Mildenhall in Suffolk with 1,401; Dalkeith, the other Scottish camp, held 958. In all, some 21,000 Ukrainian European Voluntary Workers and 860 dependants came to Britain between 1947 and 1950.

Restrictions on changing employment were lifted at the beginning of 1951 for men who had been in the country three years, and most of the hostels closed by the middle of that decade. Of the men brought from Italy, only 81 were eventually removed to Germany.

A chapel after the camp

Peter Kormylo, whose father settled locally, recalled a priest travelling from Edinburgh each month during his childhood. In his account, worship also brought friends together: gatherings continued socially, and religious singing gave way to folk songs. The chapel therefore connected people who no longer shared the same camp address. A 2022 Herald report describes the Friends of the Ukrainian Chapel, established in 2009, working to preserve both the building and the memories of its community.

Scotland and onward journeys

Kormylo told the BBC that some men found mining work in central Scotland. Those who had married locally, including his father, often stayed nearby; others went to England, the United States or Canada. These recollections describe several possible paths from Hallmuir rather than a single destination shared by all residents.

Faces in family photographs

Two photographs reproduced in Michael Drapan’s history of Ukrainians in Huddersfield connect Hallmuir with later lives in Yorkshire. One shows men in suits posing outdoors around 1948–1949; another shows a group taking a break from farm work around 1947–1948. Drapan identifies Wasyl Zubak, Andriy Prychidnyj, and Stefan and Mychajlo Hnatkiwskyj among the men who subsequently settled in Huddersfield. These family photographs preserve both work and friendship during their years at Hallmuir.

Renewal and connections with Ukraine

In March 2022, the chapel became a collection point for clothes and medicines destined for Ukraine. The BBC reported that donations would travel through Edinburgh. Later that year, the Herald described repairs to the roof, windows and interior, alongside plans for a museum in a neighbouring barrack. Preserving the old chapel and supporting people displaced by a new war had become connected parts of the community’s work. South of Scotland Enterprise announced a £52,777 grant in May 2022 for repairs, landscaping and visitor-centre development. By the 2026 Doors Open Days programme, the chapel was advertising a museum barrack containing historical photographs.

The Friends’ programme has run in four phases since 2018, covering the chapel inside and out, a visitor building, services and the grounds; drainage and new windows were completed first. Besides the enterprise grant, money came from the Lockerbie Trust Fund and from Muirhall Windfarm, and the appeal passed its £80,000 target by £10,500.

The site today

The chapel is a single-storey hut of corrugated sheeting on a timber frame and a concrete base, six bays long, with a three-barred cross on the gable and blue dressings around the door and windows. Inside are timber pews, prisoners’ paintings, an altar screen and a ceiling painted blue and scattered with gold stars.

A white cross stands in a low blue-painted enclosure at the entrance, between the Scottish and Ukrainian flags. Its plaque reads “This cross is dedicated to those who gave their lives for freedom” above the Ukrainian words Поляглим за Україну and the dates 27 May 1947 to 2007. Other huts of the camp survive nearby, one of them still carrying a cross on its gable.

The chapel and the ground around it are held on lease from the Buchanan-Jardine family of Castlemilk. Inside, a full list of the 416 original internees is displayed, together with copies of photographs given by Ukrainian veterans and their families, and the site is looked after by their relatives and by the wider Ukrainian community.

A timber post on a concrete base by the entrance carries a plaque in Ukrainian and English reading “This chapel was created by Ukrainian POWs during their internment here after World War 2”. A visitor writing in 2014 found the chapel still cared for and in use, with regular services and the occasional wedding, and next door a small museum and library whose walls were covered with photographs and information and whose tables carried binders of further documents. The 2026 local report describes two prefabricated huts remaining at the camp, the Greek Catholic chapel and the cultural hub, with people still involved in the Hallmuir Trust.