Description:Opening in 1921, this children's home was originally a hostel for working girls called Riversdale.
As such it would have been home to girls who were no longer in school but were still in care. They would take on work outside the home in the same way as any other young women.
“I left the homes [Shenley Fields Cottage Homes] in 1929 and went to Riversdale House on the corner of Pebble Mill Road. It was later called Pebble Mill House. I had a wonderful time there. I started work at Southalls Chemist in Bull Street. My wages were 10/- per week. I had to divide that up for savings, rent etc. I saved quite a lot of money there. Riversdale House was looked on as a finishing school where you stayed until you were 18 or 19 years old. Then they found you a position where you lived in.”
May Pearson who lived in Riversdale from 1929. [The Children’s Home Village, Jill Plumley, 1992 p141. reproduced here with the kind permission of the author].
In 1952 it became a children’s home and was re-named Pebble Mill House, a reference to its position on the corner of Pebble Mill Road. The girls who had been there when it was a hostel were transferred to the new family group homes or placed with foster parents. The new Pebble Mill House was to be an ‘interim home’ for 20 children who needed a period to adjust after ‘unfortunate experiences’.
In 1965, the home was moved wholesale –children, staff and furniture - into South Acre. New children and staff were then brought into Pebble Mill House.
In 1971, some of the garden was taken away to make space for Pebble Mill Studios, the new home of the BBC in Birmingham, as this contributor to a forum on the BBC Studios remembers:
“I used to live in the large house on the same side of the road as the studio, it was then a children’s home, called Pebble Mill House. The end of the garden was where we, the children, had our own little patch of garden to tend, I remember being told that we were losing part of the garden so that a television studio could be built. I would walk past the studio to go to play in Cannon Hill Park, and imagine all the things going on inside. It seemed magical to me, and I always liked the programmes made there, what is going to happen to the place now I wonder?”
The house was leased by the Council, and when the lease expired at the end of 1976, the children’s home was closed.
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Image: Photograph of the building taken in 2005. Photograph reproduced with the kind permission of R Barton and the current owners of the building.
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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.