Description:Home 9 was not one of the initial homes built in the Shenley Fields Cottage Homes complex. It was built a few years later – probably one of the two homes built in 1893 or 1905. According to published recollections, Home 9 was, in 1905, the largest home in Shenley Fields, housing 27 boys. This suggests that it was the 28-bed home built in 1905 as the earlier homes were for 24 children.
Home 9 was one of the first homes at Shenley fields to have married couples as houseparents. In the 1920s, Mr and Mrs Squires were houseparents. They moved onto Vauxhall Boy’s Hostel and were succeeded by Mr and Mrs Sturge in the 1930s, Mr and Mrs Aldridge, and Mr and Mrs Parry in the 1940s.
In 1948 28 boys aged 5 to 15 were accommodated in the home and it stayed as an all boys home until 1955.
In 1949, Home 9 adopted the name of The Trees.
The 1950s brought Mr and Mrs Mallett and Frank and Nellie Cloudsley and the home still had up to 27 boys living there.
In approximately 1955, Frances and Jack Bowes took over the Trees when it became the reception/assessment centre for adolescent girls and junior boys. The number of children accommodated reduced from 27 to 17.
After a time, the Bowes moved out of The Trees and moved into Bythorn while still maintaining their role at the Trees.
In 1966, the Trees was classified as a special reception centre for girls up to 12 which meant that girls on remand could be accommodated in the reception unit instead of in a remand home.
An edited extract from an oral history interview with a former member of staff in the late 1960s:
"I was really quite chuffed that they were asking me in my early twenties to run a teenage unit. Really what they wanted was anybody, somebody to go into this home so that this warden could go off on a course. At first it was an absolute nightmare. The first three months they [the children] ran circles round me, they were all bigger than me for a start, they were towering great big strapping teenagers, boys and girls, which was hard. They taught me some swear words that I’d never heard in all of my life. They came from all walks of life but they were rough and ready, very streetwise. After three months I got quite used to it and I began to, I really quite enjoyed actually it was a challenge and the kids were there through no fault of their own. They came from really hard backgrounds, poor backgrounds, hadn’t had any support, hadn’t had any help. So my twelve months, towards the end of the twelve months I was really enjoying it and the children were happy and they were quite sad when I was going to move on when the warden came back."
An edited extract from an oral history interview with a former member of staff in the 1970s:
“It was an observation and assessment centre at the time. Youngsters came into the home to be observed and look at behaviour patterns. You would write a report after six to eight weeks to say where they should be placed. If it was a family group home, perhaps explore specialist foster care placements or whatever was decided. And it did work quite well in terms of identifying, because we personally knew quite a few of homes in the city and sometimes you knew the regime so you could think yeah, that would actually suit the youngster and so on. And that was the objective. I think it was twelve-bedded at that time.”
The Bowes left in 1980. In the same year the number of beds in The Trees was reduced to 12. At this time, as a short-term reception centre, it was known as an observation and assessment centre – one of six serving the city.
In 1982, when the city’s residential care was organised into districts, the Trees was re-categorised as one of the five treatment units serving the city. The treatment units were intended to accommodate adolescents (aged 14 years and older), who would previously have been referred to a community home with education, as part of a policy to reduce the numbers of community homes with education.
By 1986, The Trees had closed.
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Image: A plan of Shenley Fields Cottage Homes in 1890.
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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.