Description:Home 15 was on the right hand side of the drive, opposite Windyridge (Home 12) and was intended for boys only.
In 1948, it is listed as having accommodation for 28 boys and girls and in the following year it became known as Littledene.
An extract from an oral history with someone who lived in Home 15 in the 1960s:
"Home 15 was mixed, there were girls and boys. The boys had their own dormitory and the girls had theirs. I should imagine there were sixteen children perhaps which to be honest is enough for any parents to look after - strangers or not.
"The food - on Monday you would have leftovers from Sunday. And what you never ate today you’d eat tomorrow and by God it was put in front of you. We used to get caster oil or cod liver oil every day. I think that was just a punishment thing, I don’t think it ever done anybody any good.
"The reason I believed that I was in the Homes was because I wasn’t perfect. I know this sounds obscure now but as an eight-year-old / ten-year-old that’s what I believed, that I wasn’t perfect, that’s why I’m in here. Because nobody wanted to tell me the answer so you form your own.
"In a morning, you’d get up for seven o’clock, thereabouts. My job was to stoke the boiler, go back in. Then you’d have your breakfast, have another wash if you got dirty in the boiler room. You’d get dressed and then be off to school. It was quite pleasant to be honest because as soon as you got out of the gates of them Homes I was like a dog off a leash, you know it was lovely. I know I'm cursing the Homes and I shouldn't really.
"After school, you’d go in, you’d get changed. Any chores to do, you had to sort out. You would have your tea, with the tea also came the washing up and clearing away and whatever. And then you’d go out for an hour and a half to play. You’d be back in that house for quarter to seven and you’d be in bed by seven, you know regardless. They didn’t like you talking and chatting in bed.
"Weekends were desperate to be honest. You’d get up, you’d have your breakfast, you’d do whatever chores again. It was pretty much mundane, what you done last week you were doing this week. Then you would go out without leaving the Homes. You’d be back in for your lunch. You’d go out again and then you’d be back in for your tea. The only thing wrong with weekends was there was too much time on your hands.
"If you go down the Drive, the houses are on the right and over the other side of the houses there was massive green. Absolutely huge, you know, you wouldn’t want to mow it! Yeah and we used to do sports days on there.
"This one particular year they took all the trees and whatever the Parks Department had cut down and they had a bonfire in the bottom of this green that I just spoke about. And this bonfire honestly it was the size of the house.
"The officer in charge was Nancy Bradberry and her office was where the clock is – we used to go and watch films there once a week. Anybody who wanted to watch the film could go and they did multiple showings of black and white Tarzan or whatever it might be, you’d got to be there at whatever time and everybody in the home that wanted to see it saw it. But like The Sound of Music most things were duplicated that much, you’d seen it before anyway so there was never a heaving crowd.
"You sort of kept yourself to yourself because you were in a world of misfits and that’s the only word that comes to mind right now."
In 1972, Littledene and Springfield, next door, were formally joined to form one unit which retained the name Littledene. At the time of the ‘merger’, each home accommodated 12 children and each of the houses had a large dining/play room, a sitting room, bathroom, WC, kitchen and an office on the ground floor and on the upper floor were two dormitories each for 6 children, two bedrooms for staff and a bathroom, WC and sluice room. The new combined unit housed 16 children aged eight and upwards and had a special emphasis on the needs of young adolescents.
Littledene closed in 1982.
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Image: Photograph of the backs of Littledene and Springfield (on the far right of the photograph). The photograph was taken in the late 1990s, when the buildings were empty, prior to development of the road. Reproduced here with the kind permission of Mike Beard.
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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.