WE’RE used to news stories about how newcomers to Britain are faring, but the Adver was running them well over half a century ago.

Swindon’s Polish community, now one of the oldest in the country, was already firmly established when we ran a feature in 1959 headlined: “‘Our Walcot Homes are Heaven,’ say Exiled Poles.”

We spoke to several people among the five per cent of the new estate’s population whose roots were in Poland.

Our interviewees weren’t only in Walcot, though: “Praise for Swindonians came from a young Park South couple, Mr and Mrs Michael Borek of Wolseley Avenue.

“Mr Borek is off sick from Pressed Steel after being hurt at work, and, said his wife Sophia, his fellow workers have rallied round in splendid style. His workmates have been very good to him,’ she said. ‘They made a collection for him, and have visited him.’

“Mr Borek, who spent three years in the Norwegian Merchant Navy after coming to England, said: ‘I think that England is the best country in Europe. It has a good standard of living and what you want you can buy.’”

Everybody we interviewed was here because of the Second World War and its aftermath. Some had escaped Nazi invaders and others Soviet invaders in the chaotic early years of the conflict when Hitler and Stalin divided the country between them. Some had gone on to fight against the Nazis in any way they could, while others had fled the post-war absorption of Poland into the Soviet bloc.

All were happy to be in Swindon and praised Swindonians for being welcoming – but all of the adults born in Poland yearned to return there one day.

Among them was Mrs Honorata Belzki, who lived in Drake’s Way, Walcot, with her husband and in-laws. She hadn’t been in Poland since 1940, when she was deported by the Soviets. She had come to England a little over a decade earlier and met her husband, who now worked at the Brize Norton US Air Force, at a Polish camp in Fairford.

We reported: “She likes Swindon. ‘They really look after the Polish people here,’ she said.

“Mrs Belzki’s mother-in-law, whose husband works for Swindon Corporation, thinks Swindon’s appeal lies in the number of Poles who have gathered here. Her neighbours are Polish, and she has made friends with many of her compatriots.”

Fellow Drake’s Way resident Antoni Smolarek, a father of eight and holder of British and Polish decorations for bravery, said: “After the war I was in the Fairford hostel and all the time I thought of where my children were to go to school.

“The children learn only Polish there. I want them to learn Polish and English.”

Helena Wlasiuk of Queen’s Drive in Park South taught geography and arts and crafts at what was then Drove Secondary Modern School. This extraordinary woman was a veteran of unimaginable hardships, having survived Soviet deportation to Siberia. She had last seen her husband and brother in 1940.

“I really like Swindon,” she said. “When I came to England my home was at Fairford and I liked it so much there that when I was posted to Carlisle I asked to be sent ‘back home’ and came down here again.”