Penrhos was set up in the northwestern Welsh town of Pwllheli in 1949, according to the Wales Online website.
It was part of one of over 200 resettlement camps for Poles established across the UK after World War II, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
These facilities were designed to house Polish soldiers, airmen and their families, as well as Poles freed from prisoner-of-war and concentration camps in Germany, Austria and Italy, according to historians.
The aim was to help Polish veterans who were unable to return to Soviet-controlled Poland by offering them an opportunity to become “re-assimilated” into civilian society and start afresh in a foreign country, Wales Online said.
Penrhos Polish Village
However, many of these resettlement camps, including Penrhos Polish Village, continued for decades, the PAP news agency reported.
When it became clear that some of the battle-weary Polish soldiers would not be able to rejoin civilian life, a care home for veterans was also established in Penrhos, according to officials.
In the years that followed, Polish seniors from other parts of the UK began to come to northern Wales to spend their retirement in Penrhos, PAP reported.
The Polish village, which at one point housed around 200 people, comprises over 100 homes, as well as a church, library, a large communal dining hall, a shop and allotments, according to news outlets.
End of an era
Michał Dreweński, the head of Penrhos Polish Village, told PAP that resident numbers began to dwindle in recent years, as the settlement’s original Polish occupants “naturally pass away.”
Today Penrhos has a population of 45, including 30 Poles, even as costs of maintenance and repairs “remain very high,” Dreweński said.
As a result, the housing group ClwydAlyn, which merged with the Polish Housing Society that founded the village, recently announced plans to redevelop Penrhos.
The redevelopment is set to include “phased demolition and replacement of all of the existing residential accommodation” to make way for “new affordable housing” that will be made available for all, Wales Online reported.
The area's Polish residents will be allowed to remain in Penrhos and move to the new facilities, according to Dreweński.
Construction work is expected to start this summer and take about five years, he told the PAP news agency.
‘On the way to free Poland’
Meanwhile, as Penrhos Polish Village disappears, “the only thing to be spared the wrecking ball will be Penrhos' church, outside which a towering metal 'cross of freedom' still stands,” Wales Online noted.
“And at its stone base is an expression, dated May 1947 and carved in English, Polish and Welsh, which reads, 'On the way to free Poland,'” the Welsh website added.
Following the demolition of Penrhos Polish Village, the last remnant of the UK’s post-World War II resettlement camps for Polish nationals will be the Ilford Park Polish Home in the southwestern county of Devon, the PAP news agency reported.
This facility provides “residential and nursing care to former members of the Polish Forces under British command in World War II, and their spouses,” according to the British government.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, walesonline.co.uk, cambrian-news.co.uk, gov.uk
