Hidden Lives Revealed. A virtual archive - children in care 1881-1981 * Image of handwritten text

St Cecilia's Home For Girls, Surbiton

Photograph of St Cecilia's Home For Girls, Surbiton

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St Cecilia's Home For Girls, Surbiton

Cadogan Road (out of Maple Road), Surbiton, Surrey

(1917 - 1933)

St Cecilia's was based in the former St Martin's Home for Boys, Surbiton, which was a home for children with disabilities. In 1916 St Martin's moved to premises in Byfleet, Surrey that were specially built to meet the children's needs. This left the building in Cadogan Road, and it was reopened in 1917 after some repair and redecoration as St Cecilia's Home for Girls.

St Cecilia's housed 28 girls and principally took children whose fathers had died or were disabled during the First World War. As it said in the Society's newsletter Our Waifs and Strays... 'Cecilia was a saint whose name is traditionally associated with music and harmony, and is generally represented with an organ or other instrument. In these days, when our pleadings are ever going up 'may Earth's discords cease', would not St Cecilia's Home be a happy place of refuge for a band of little maids whose peaceful family life has been so cruelly shattered by the discord which has cost them the health or the life of a parent?'

The Home closed in 1933.



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