Winfield Camp

An airfield with a second purpose

Winfield had served as a landing ground during the First World War, when it was known as Horndean. The airfield proper was built over 1941 and 1942 and opened in April 1942 as the satellite of Charterhall in the night-fighter training programme. Squeezed between two roads, it had only two runways, of 1,600 and 1,100 yards, with thirty-seven hardstands and four blister hangars. As a satellite station it was planned for 686 airmen and 56 WAAFs spread over five sites: three airmen’s sites, a WAAF site and a communal site, with a small sewage plant nearby.

That dispersed accommodation is what mattered after the flying stopped. Historic Environment Scotland records the camps in Hutton parish, north of the airfield, centred at NT 90451 51889 and NT 90421 51830, with further dispersed sites and a sewage works. Vertical air photographs flown on 15 April 1946 show the huts still standing, the eastern communal camp then consisting of at least sixteen buildings and three emergency air-raid shelters. The Airfields of Britain Conservation Trust records that the airfield itself closed in November 1945 and passed to the War Office. The later aerial photograph below shows the surviving runway pattern amid fields, a broad view of the former airfield rather than the footprint of the Ukrainian hostel.

The displaced persons camp, 1946

On 28 October 1946 the 22 Artillery Support Company of the 2nd Polish Corps arrived at what Aviation Trails calls Winfield Displaced Persons Camp. Lady Brigid McEwen’s account for Gavinton places the same movement in its wider Berwickshire setting: the 1st Corps had trained in the county from 1942, and after the war men of the 2nd Corps came to Britain, some to Winfield near Berwick in 1946. As displaced persons the Polish men went into Berwick, where local people grew fond of them. About a year after their arrival the unit was demobilised and moved away. A makeshift memorial to the Polish Armed Forces still stands on the former camp ground.

Finding work after military service

A personal recollection preserved by Erskine Veterans Charity describes the practical work of resettlement at Winfield. Krystyna Caulfield recounts meeting veteran Archie Brown, who told her that he was seconded to the Polish artillery unit there in 1946. He interviewed men to assess their English and help them find employment in Britain. His account puts an individual face to the transition from military service to civilian work. It concerns the Polish unit; the Ukrainian EVW hostel is separately documented in Kormylo’s directory.

The Ukrainian hostel

Kormylo’s map names the accommodation as the EVW Hostel, Winfield Camp, Hutton. His appendix lists Winfield Camp under Berwick-on-Tweed among hostels holding significant numbers of ethnic Ukrainians. The two descriptions locate the named hostel in the same border district and preserve its place in the Ukrainian network of accommodation. They establish the Ukrainian connection without turning the whole Polish resettlement camp into a Ukrainian institution.

The wider pattern behind that entry is documented in the Ukrainians in the United Kingdom encyclopaedia. From 1947 responsibility for administering such camps began to pass from the War Office to the National Assistance Board, the National Service Hostels Corporation and other civilian bodies, and the camps were officially redesignated as hostels. Hostels usually accommodated workers of more than one nationality, and most residents were only able to leave after the beginning of 1951, when employment restrictions started to be lifted. That is the framework within which a Winfield hostel would have operated; the encyclopaedia does not name Winfield itself.

A harvest hostel, about 1951

The one contemporary trace of the civilian hostel is a photograph. Berwick Record Office’s photographic index lists item BRO 1944/1/55/9 as “Camp - Winfield Harvest Hostel”, dated by the cataloguer N.D. [C.1951]. The name is a recognised one: the Central Office of Information made a recruitment film called Harvest Hostel in 1948, the file for which survives at Kew as INF 6/238. Harvest hostels housed the seasonal agricultural labour that the postwar Borders depended on, and the entry shows accommodation of that kind still running at Winfield around 1951. The photograph itself has not been obtained, and the date is an archivist’s estimate rather than a recorded one.

Between the departure of the Polish unit in 1947 and that catalogue entry the record is silent. A search of the National Archives Discovery catalogue on 13 September 2026 returned no entry of any kind for a Winfield camp or hostel, and the Gazette holds no naturalisation notice giving a Winfield address. Who ran the hostel, how many people it held, which nationalities lived there and when it closed are all unknown. The requisition and de-requisition file for the Winfield land, AIR 2/16942, runs to 1958 and has not been read.

Wojtek and the memory of Winfield

Wojtek came to Winfield with the 22nd Artillery Supply Company. Local people grew familiar with the bear around the airfield. Archie Brown’s story includes the surprise of finding a bear on the regimental roster and his role in helping arrange its move to Edinburgh Zoo. Wojtek entered the zoo in 1947 as the soldiers moved towards civilian lives, and he died there in 1963. His story became a lasting symbol of the Polish experience in Scotland and of Winfield’s place in it, marked now by statues in Duns and in Edinburgh.

The site afterwards

After the Polish troops left, the site was allocated to the USAF and earmarked for development that never came. It reverted to RAF control in October 1955 and was then disposed of and sold. The runways found a second life in motor sport: a meeting in October 1951 drew an attendance of over 50,000. A small group of private flyers later reopened the site and renovated the watch office, but that operation ceased and the building fell into disrepair. The accommodation sites have largely been removed, though buildings survive on the former WAAF ground where the camp stood.