Description:Southview was opened as a purpose-built probationary home within Erdington Cottage Homes. Whereas the cottage homes complex was opened in 1900, the Probationary, or Pro, Home was not opened until 20th January 1925. It was built to house 32 children – 16 girls and 16 boys.
The idea of a probationary home was to provide short-stay accommodation for children when they first came to the cottage homes. This gave them a period of quarantine so that infectious diseases (a significant problem in all the cottage homes at time could be contained. The Pro Home was built on a piece of land which faced onto Reservoir Road rather than, like the rest of the homes, onto the drive. To build it, former farm buildings – used by the cottage homes as a tool house and potting shed - were demolished.
The Pro Home was not the first probationary home linked to Erdington Cottage Homes. From 1909 two houses (also on Reservoir Road) were used initially as a Receiving Home, then as probationary home from 1914. The buildings were known as Reservoir Cottages and later as the Probationary Homes. When the new Pro Home was built, ‘the use of the two houses in Reservoir Road for the purposes of quarantine [was] discontinued’.
By 1948, the Pro had maintained its short-term focus and was accommodating children aged between 2 and 14. In 1949, the name of the Pro Home was changed to South View.
However, over the course of the next two decades, Southview (the name having become one word in most records of the time), children tended to stay in the home for longer periods.
In approximately 1959, according to the electoral roll, David and Maude Whitton took up residence at Erdington Cottage Homes as the houseparents of Southview.
An edited extract from an oral history by a woman who was in Southview in the 1960s:
“On a Sunday we had to wear special coats for church which were called duster coats – and they were cotton gingham in bright colours. They didn’t have buttons on, you just tied them with a bow almost like you would an apron. You had to wear white knickers on a Sunday and white socks – I don’t know what difference that made to God. On Sundays you did your jobs in the morning and have your breakfast, you do your jobs after breakfast, then church, and you would have to walk around the local park – Brookvale Park, not Rookery Park – and we had to walk all of it. You walked in crocodile style – and you didn’t step out of line. And you had to do that every Sunday. On a Friday evening, the girls would have to go to Slade Road School dancing - pas d’ bah – and the boys would have to go to scouts. I think my brother wore khaki trousers until he was 15 cos they never had long trousers. And he hated football but he had to play football. Those were things that had to be done.
Now I’m older I realise the walk after church was because they were preparing Sunday lunch for all these children. But don’t forget the staff didn’t peel the vegetables, or peel the potatoes. The staff didn’t do the washing up, or lay the tables or the cleaning of the shoes. We did all that. And we made the beds."
In May 1965, all the children and the staff from Southview were moved to a newly adapted children’s home in Edgbaston. This was intended to be a long-term home for children. The following is the Erdington Cottage Homes Superintendent’s report of the move:
"On Wednesday 12th May, Mr and Mrs Whitton and 16 boys and girls transferred from ‘Southview’ to their new family home in ... Rd, Edgbaston. We were sorry to lose them and trust that all will be very happy in their new environment. ‘Southview’ will now be allocated for ‘short stay’ children and Mr and Mrs McGuff, newly appointed houseparents, will take up resident duties as from 1st June 1965”.
The houseparents from 1965 to 1980 recalled the initial function of Southview when they took over:
"It was a short-stay facility. One of the major issues at the time was what was known as interim care orders and they were used with gay reckless abandon against truants. You played truant from school and were taken before magistrates. The magistrates were inclined to make an interim care order which lasted for three weeks. During which time you assessed whether these kids would go to school, how they behaved, why they didn’t go to school. If during the period in care they attended school regularly, they went home. If they didn’t, they were committed to care. A care order could last until you were sixteen. You could be brought into care for non-school attendance at a tender age and spend the next ten years of your life in care. For truancy. We used to get a lot of kids on interim care orders, they did tend to be short stay and tended to go home. The other thing that tended to be short stay were confinements. Where there were a number of children in the family and Dad wouldn’t cope with the kids while Mum was away, so they came into care ‘til Mum came home and then they went back again."
By 1979, the number of beds had been reduced to 18, still accommodating both boys and girls. By 1982, the number of beds had been further reduced to 16.
Allegations of sexual abuse blighted the home in the mid to late 1980s. This was followed by a change of name – to Reservoir Road Community Home in 1988. At this stage the Home was what was known as a Group 1 children’s home, warranting a higher level of staffing than other children’s homes.
Reservoir Road closed as a children’s home between 1998 and 2002. This would make it the last remaining unit within the former Erdington Cottage Homes. In November 2002, the building was demolished.
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Image: Southview taken at an unknown date, reproduced with the kind permission of P McGuff.
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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.