Description:Home 5 was one of the first homes built in the Shenley Fields Cottage Homes complex and was initially built to house 24 girls. It was initially the home closest to the Lodge.
May Pearson, contributing to Jill Plumley’s book of memories ('The Children's Home Village', 1992), recollects that, in the 1920s, Home 5 was the only mixed sex home.
Certainly, the home was girls only before this time, but by 1948, it was mixed, housing young boys (aged 3 to 6) and girls (aged 3 to 15).
Mr and Mrs Moore were houseparents from 1953 to 1968. Preceding them included Miss Ford and Miss Tonk.
In 1949, all the Cottage Homes at Shenley Fields adopted names instead of numbers and Home 5 became Ferndale.
In the 1950s, this home ‘swapped places’ with Merriland. All children and staff, and the name of Ferndale, were moved to where Home 5 was, nearer to the sick bay. It remained in this new location until it closed.
An edited extract from an oral history interview with two sisters who lived in Ferndale in the 1960s:
A: “No I don’t even remember going the first day, I don’t remember anything. It was just, that was my life. I don’t remember why, I don’t even remember my Mom coming to visit me at the beginning or anybody. I just thought it was normal to be there. I felt safe but not safe if you know what I mean. Like everybody else outside when you went to school, it was different wasn’t it? When you started going to school and people come from normal houses and we was from home with certain clothes on.”
B: “I think we had a kind of a uniform and that’s how I think people knew we were in the home because it was like a khaki kind of a skirt wasn’t it? And just a jumper as I remember, like a knitted kind of jumper. But, but then as the years went by and each individual home was responsible for its own funding or whatever, then things became a bit more… didn’t they? We sort of got different clothes and we didn’t have to go to the store for our shoes, we went to a shop didn’t we?”
A: “Once ten of us kids ran away together in a group and we got as far as Selly Oak. When we got our pocket money we all went to the shop and bought loads of sweets, that was going to be our dinners for I don’t know how long. We found this derelict house, we swept it all out, we made it all nice didn’t we?”
A: “But then there was happy occasions weren’t there, I mean we went on holidays. We And the bonfire nights which were amazing.”
B: “Certain people sponsored the homes, must of, because I remember Shell BP sponsored the Christmas parties and they were absolutely amazing. We thought we were, well they probably weren’t but we thought they were absolutely amazing.”
B: “I think there were fourteen children in there. But there used to be different children there at different times, one would come, some would leave, new ones would come. There wasn’t always as many boys as there was girls. So I’d say there was about fourteen at any one time.”
A: “So there was me and you, two in bunk beds and another one so there was five in that room and then there was a two- bed room that led off that and one that led off that wasn’t there? And then the boys was more of a dormitory wasn’t it?”
B: “Toy wise there was a play room wasn’t there and I guess everyone just, it all went in there. You just played with everyone’s really. But clothes, we had our own cupboards and we had a locker beside our bed didn’t we?”
B: “When we left there wasn’t a big like leaving party or anything was there or anything. We just went, just like that, wasn’t it, your life it was just like - that’s it now. And who did we leave behind, you see I don’t remember saying goodbye, because we’d spent five, six years with those people, well [name removed] and all them it was longer. I don’t ever remember saying goodbye or, maybe that was a good thing.”
In the 1970s, Ferndale changed its name to Cherry Garth.
In 1979, the number of beds in Cherry Garth had been reduced to 12 – half what it had when it was first opened – accommodating both boys and girls.
Cherry Garth moved to St Vincents in Moseley (Moseley Road) in 1984 - with the Melplash home – but retained the name Cherry Garth. In 1989, in the Moseley Road premises, it had 16 beds.
By 1991, the home was closed.
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Image: The Assembly Hall (taken in the late 1980s just before demolition) which was used for the cottage homes' church services and later for social activities. It was located just behind Home 7. Photograph reproduced here with the kind permission of Kate Slade.
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Source: This history was compiled by the Birmingham Children's Homes Project, an initiative to explore Birmingham City Council-run children’s homes between 1949 and 1990.