IN the winter of 1956-1957 hundreds of Suez crisis refugees evicted from Egypt by Gamal Abdel-Nasser began arriving at a disused Stonehouse hostel. Five decades later, in August this year, an emotional reunion took place. David Gibbs reports

Katherine Bassi and Mira Farrugia have not seen each other for 41 years. They were 12 and 11 respectively the last time they last set eyes on each other at Bridgend Hostel in 1958 but neither the distance nor the years have diminished their friendship.

So it was an emotional time when they were reunited last month for a trip down memory lane.

Mira (nee Pace) and husband Eddie, also a former hostel refugee, had travelled from Australia to visit a friend, Katherine, and a place indelibly imprinted on their lives.

"It has been lovely," says Katherine, now 60. "I couldn't believe I could see her. "We've been corresponding all these years. That is what you call real friends. We have spent hours reminiscing

"There's a lot of things that she noticed had changed around here. She's glad she's gone to Australia to live. She finds it is a better life."

But Katherine has no regrets her family stayed in England. Her family antecedents stretch across Greece, Italy, Malta and Egypt - her father was Maltese, her mother was Greek, her grandmother Italian.

"There are quite a few families from the hostel here," she says. "They were all children like I was, some of them probably younger than I was when they came over and they are all over the place. We stop and talk when we see each other."

Katherine's father was a storekeeper on the Alexandria docks before he was evicted from the country and forced to leave the fruits of a lifetime behind.

He lost his store, his bank accounts were frozen and 22 years of life insurance forfeited. They arrived here with just £50 and were ferried to temporary accommodation across England before arriving at Bridgend in January 1957. Mira, whose family had come straight from Cairo, was there already.

"We came with thick coats, which we never wore in Egypt and made sure we had woolly socks," recalls Katherine. "It was amazing to see the snow because I had never seen it before.

"We were looked after very well. We didn't go out much really because in the hostel they had everything."

Katherine went to the Rosary School in Beeches Green before joining the workforce at 15.

"We were in class with ordinary children of our age but we had special lessons in the vestry because we didn't know as much as the other children," she says.

But the children found it much easier to settle than the adults. The trauma of the move took its toll on Katherine's father.

"He was very depressed when he came over," she says. "He wanted to go to Australia but my uncle was in Bridgend and he persuaded my father to stay in England.

"It was a good job he did because if he had gone to Australia it would have taken six weeks by ship which my mother was not very happy about. She didn't really want to go.

"So my uncle found my father a job, working in the Cainscross Co-op and that was it. He died in 1961. He was 57." Tears come to Katherine's eyes as she speaks.

"He died of heartache, probably because of all the things he lost. My brother was only eight when he died.

"My father was in a way bitter about leaving because he didn't have a lot of time to sell his things but we thank the Lord we were very well welcomed in England and we say thank you - that's all we could say."

Before he died Katherine's father had managed to find enough proof of his Egyptian bound assets to persuade the bank manager to loan him the money to buy a house in Stonehouse for his family.

Katherine lives there to this day with husband Mario, whom she met on a holiday to Italy and with whom she has a son, two daughters and two grandchildren, but the memories of her birthplace have left an indelible imprint.

"I wish I could go back for a holiday," she says. For Mira, 59, and husband Eddie, 61, remembering is also emotional.

"We both felt the need to come back and reminisce and see the place how we remembered it," she says. But so much has changed. The hostel is long gone.

"The area is a bit dilapidated, especially where we used to play as children," she notes. The couple's story is a remarkable one of discovery, of loss and of rediscovery.

Eddie was 12 when his family arrived at the hostel from Alexandria. His family and Mira's became familiar to each other.

"For us children it was very nice coming here because we were playing together and we all started school together," says Mira, who also went to Rosary School.

"But the parents were devastated because they had left homes and belongings. It was either your belongings or your life."

Eddie's family moved a year or so later while Mira and her family stayed until the hostel closed in 1958, when they moved into a Brimscombe council house. They lived there seven years before following Mira's sister and husband to Australia.

Unbeknown to them Eddie's family trailed in their wake a few years later and one night quite by chance - serendipity some might say - the couple were reunited at a dance in the Paddington area of Sydney.

"My barber organised the dance and said, 'Come you might find someone to your heart's content," Eddie recalls. "As soon as we got into the hall I saw Mira."

FROM THE ARCHIVES....

The mysterious presence of government inspectors around the Bridgend Hostel in September 1956 meant it was not long before a Stroud Journal reporter was sniffing around.

In a report the paper asked: "Has the Ministry of Works succeeded in selling the now vacant residential hostel at Bridgend, Stonehouse, or are the premises about to be put to fresh uses?"

Just two months later at the end of November the Journal broke the news that the first refugees were on their way, crowing triumphantly over its then rival the Stroud News that it had "exclusively" revealed weeks ago that Dpreparatory activities were taking place at Bridgend".

Days later the journal recorded the arrival of the first refugees. "There were men, women, children and babies in arms...

"In spite of all their difficulties and the fact that hurried departures from Egypt have deprived them of almost all their worldly goods, the evacuees are taking life very cheerfully and trying hard to adapt themselves to the new conditions."

The community rallied to their aid prompting then Stonehouse Parish Council chairman J H Anderson to say: "I am proud of the people of Stonehouse and the wonderful response they have made to our appeal for help at the hostel."

And Vincent Ciantar expressed the gratitude of all his fellow refugees. "I am certain I shall make my home here: I like British people."