Ponteland YMCA Hostel No. 2

The Ukrainian arrivals

Most Ukrainian European Voluntary Workers reached Britain in the second half of 1947 and the first half of 1948, with the last arrivals in 1949; official statistics count 20,912 in all. Men were placed mainly in agriculture, which took just over half of them, then coal mining and domestic service in hostels and hospitals. Workers were housed in hostels close to their work and could not change employment without Ministry of Labour approval until, from January 1951, those with three years’ residence could apply for release. These are national figures; they describe the scheme that brought Ukrainians to Ponteland, not the hostel itself.

Planning files for hostels and a camp

Northumberland Archives preserves a more complicated local picture in the planning files of Castle Ward Rural District Council. In August and September 1941 plans were submitted for agricultural workers’ hostels at Whalton, Stamfordham and Ponteland; the Ponteland plan, for Middle Drive, is dated 14 August 1941, but the word approved is crossed out and the archives have not established that it was built.

In May 1942 the Ministry of Works and Buildings submitted a plan for a proposed prisoner-of-war camp, No. 69, on Middle Drive at Darras Hall, and the archives record the camp in use between 1945 and 1947. Neither planning file mentions the YMCA or Ukrainians. The site and dates of Camp 69 therefore belong to the prisoner-of-war camp’s history and are not transferred here to Hostel No. 2.

Camp 69, Darras Hall

Camp 69 held Italian and then German prisoners. A list of Italian camps drawn from Hugh Shankland’s history of Italians in the North East gives Darras Hall camp, Ponteland, with hostels at Catton, Colwell, Gosforth, Longhorsley, Prestwick, Raylees near Elsdon and Wylam. The National Archives holds a Foreign Office file on 69 Working Camp, Darras Hall, covering 1945 to 1947, and the Wiener Holocaust Library holds an issue of Welle 69, a German-language periodical produced inside the camp and dated 1 June 1946, covering re-education, politics, culture and sport.

A diocesan history of the German Catholic prisoners transcribes two Northern Command lists. In December 1945 Ponteland was one of eight main camps in the diocese, with 1,159 prisoners; only Featherstone near Haltwhistle was larger. In July 1946 the command’s list of main camps and hostels gave Camp 69 Darras Hall with thirteen hostels, from Prestwick within Ponteland parish to Raylees near Otterburn and Druridge Bay on the coast. The same orders set up a circuit of prisoner chaplains, with commandants required to provide transport so that hostels and billetees belonging to the parent camp could be visited.

Whether YMCA Hostel No. 2 later occupied the Darras Hall camp, the Prestwick hostel or some other building in the parish is unknown. The prisoner-of-war figures above are camp totals and must not be read as hostel populations, and the Raylees hostel, which did pass to Ukrainian farm workers in 1947, has its own page.