St Mary's Convalescent Home Broadstairs

I received the comments below with regard to Tony Euden’s book The Childrens Convalescent Homes of Broadstairs click here for sample pages. I have a particular interest as much of my childhood was spent in long-term hospitals and convalescent homes in the 50s and 60s. Pretty much all of the institutional food I encountered was appalling and for the most part we were forced to eat it.

Another aspect of Convalescent Homes that I really didn’t like was that one was forced to spend much of the daytime in bed and well remember as a Cub sitting in bed in pyjama bottoms and the top half of a cub uniform doing my dib dib dib and dob dobbing.

I will try to get around to getting permission to publish David Welsh's article from the book on the internet so you can read it if you haven’t got a copy of the book.

“Many thanks for the copy of the book received today (13th January 2009). I read with great interest the pages on St Mary's Convalescent Home in Stone Road, I also read David Welsh's article.
I stayed at St Mary's Convalescent Home in the 50's and my experience of staying there is very different.

I can remember saying goodbye to my mum at Victoria Station and being handed over to a nun, which as a little girl never being away from home before, was very frightening.

I can remember handing over a ration book to the nuns, having to eat porridge every morning for breakfast and even today I hate porridge.

I can remember when I went there I had all new clothes bought for me, I had a little green shoulder bag that my dad bought me, I had a new "liberty bodice" on and a spare one in my case with those terrible rubber buttons - most people of my age will remember the dreaded "liberty bodice". When I returned home my mum went mad, I apparently had everyone else's clothes on but my own, never saw my little green bag again.

I can remember the sleeping quarters (your picture bought memories flooding back). We had a few toys under the bed in a cardboard box. There was a little girl next to me who cried and cried. In the morning she had wet the bed as she did most mornings, the nuns were not very kind to her, those memories have stayed with me all these years

I can remember having lessons out in the fields overlooking the sea. I can also remember going down to the beach. We went down a dark tunnel, on the walls were seaweed, slime, limpets, and smelling of damp, for a little girl this was not good.

Unfortunately my time there was not as pleasant as David Welsh's but I thought you may like to hear a different aspect of St. Mary's.

I went back to Broadstairs about 10-15 years ago, all that was left of the Convalescent Home was a plaque of Mary and child with a lit candle embedded in the cliff.
Anyway, many thanks and thank you for keeping all the memories of Convalescent Homes alive.”