Tuesday 7 April 2009

Yarrow Home for Convalescent Children Broadstairs

I received the following by email.

“I am the curator at a South Florida art museum – the Boca Raton Museum ofArt – and in researching an album of photographs in our collection, I discovered your website and blog.

The Museum has in its photography collections a beautiful leather-bound album entitled “The Yarrow Home Broadstairs.” It contains 20 original albumen photographs, no doubt photographed in the earliest years of the home – circa 1895 to 1910 – to promote the facility as a very fine institution. We have images of the institution’s façade facing the sea, the grounds, the enclosed playground,the lodge, the sanatorium, and the various rooms including the corridor, the verandah, a dormitory, a play-room, nurse’s sitting room, a nurse’s bedroom,dining hall, the kitchen, a group of boys, a group of girls, and a picnic.

Unfortunately I cannot find who was the photographer. They are absolutely remarkable images, and the scenes of the Victorian children with nurses and nannies are especially lovely. Would you care to post several of these for your visitors? If so, please credit them to the Permanent Collection of the Boca Raton Museum of Art.

There is a glare on several of the images, as we photographed the album for our records, and this glare is not in the originals. I apologize for the quality of these reproductions. And thank you for providing information through you website and blog on this great piece of history. Wendy M. Blazier

Click here for the rest of the pictures

Click here for my previous post about theYarrow Home for Convalescent Children Broadstairs

Here for the book Childrens Convalescent Homes Of Broadstairs By Tony Euden

Click here for text and pictures from the book about the Yarrow Home

8 comments:

  1. I worked here at the start of Thanet College in 1966 and the first thing I noticed was the staircase. Shallow steps for children, it was well designed for them. It also had a happy atmosphere.

    ReplyDelete
  2. And how many drugs had they been forced to take????

    ReplyDelete
  3. I STAYED IN THE YARROW HOME IN 1959 I MADE FRIENDS WITH A GIRL CALLED CATHER MANAHER SHE LIVED IN VICTIORA AND WENT TO SCHOOL IN ST VINCENTS LONDON.I REMEMBER A LOVELY LADY ,I THINK SHE WAS A NURSE, SHE SANG A LULABY BEFORE LIGHTS OUT.ANY BODY WITH MEMOREYS

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I stayed in 1962, i remember the song It was called at the end of the day just kneel and say thankyou lord for my work and play.........

      Delete
    2. I stayed in the home in 1959 with my brothers Derek and Ian Pike We lived in Victoria and went to St Vincents next to Westminster Cathedral and lived in the flats in Page St SW1
      Sheila

      Delete
  4. I was a Cadet Nurse at the Yarrow in 1960-1961. It was a wonderful happy place, and I remember taking the Children out on the Beach when they were wll enough.
    Are there any more nurses who worked there in the '60's?

    ReplyDelete
  5. l was at yarrow home,for three months from september till december,in 1955,l first was in st batholomews hospital,Londion with swollen glands,then l went to yarrow to convalese,l was on the top floor there were eight other beds,and outside my window was a fire escape,l was 8 years old,the two nurses that l can remember were joan and mary,there was an elderly woman named miss east,who used to take us for long walks,along the beautiful beach,l remember we almost got caught when the tide came in a bit quicker than normal,and we just got out in time.yarrow home,was a lovely peaceful place,l have great memories,like the time l went to the toilet,and got lost on the way back,l started to cry in panic,but within seconds a nurse came to my rescue,l remember playing in the large games room,where there were plenty of toys,me and a mate were mucking about locking each other in a cupboard,and a nurse told us off,she said,we would suffocate,with no air,and since that day l have suffered with claustraphobia,l think that was a good thing,because l have always been careful about going in lifts trains etc,l remember going to church on a sunday,,and collecting holly and ivy for xmas there was a large holly bush,if you came out of yarrow,turned left,and walked up to a bend,l think it was some kind of bridge,there was plenty of holly,and ivy,even today,56 years later,l still cant walk past a holly bush,without thinking of yarrow,l originally went there for a month,but l liked it so much,l kept asking to stay longer,and in time,miss east used to let me be in charge of taking the children on there daily walks,with miss east accompanying of course,the weird thing is ,l cant remember a name of any other child that stayed there.l have been back since, about10 years ago 2001,l took my daughter with me to broadstairs,a lovely lady named georgina,took me all around yarrow home,and it was like going back into a time warp,it was fantastic,,

    ReplyDelete
  6. I was at the Jarrow Home between 04/09/1951 to 30/09/1951. I was just six at the time. My recollections are few however but I can remember the steam train journey from Dartford (I was at Robin Ward, West Hill Hospital having had my appendix out). The images of Jarrow on this site don't relate to me but I can remember two things that left an impression and fact all my life. I remember the walk through the garden down to the beach - quite steep I think and I had a caliper on my leg in those days. We got caught in a thunder storm and I still don't like them. The home had a lift which got stuck between two floors. I was stuck there for a long time with a kind nurse (I was only 6!). It still don't like lifts. Happy times there I think.

    ReplyDelete

Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.