THE STORY of how East Lancashire people befriended German prisoners of war is to be screened on BBC television this week.

A book written by Pamela Howe Taylor, who spent several years in East Lancashire as a girl, will be featured in a documentary about a prisoner of war camp near Oswaldtwistle.

The Timewatch programme, which was supposed to have been screened in the autumn, will focus on Pamela's father, the Rev Joseph H Howe, who was Methodist minister in Oswaldtwistle between 1944 and 1949. At the end of the Second World War, more than 200 German prisoners were detained at Stanhill Camp.

Mr Howe visited the captives and conducted services in a corrugated Nissen hut which was the site's chapel.

Pamela, who now lives in Devon, said: "People at Mount Pleasant Methodist Church, which is now Rhyddings, suggested prisoners should be allowed to attend services at the church. In 1946, my father asked the congregation to take prisoners in for Christmas Day, and from that many friendships began which are still going on today."

Stanhill Camp eventually closed in summer 1947 and prisoners were sent to other north west sites.

Pamela's experiences have been recorded in a book, Enemies Become Friends, which was first published two years ago.

The documentary, called The Germans We Kept, will be shown on BBC 2 on Saturday, January 8, at 8.05pm.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.