A brief History of the Hollies and Lamorbey Children’s Home.

Our story begin with a Tudor house called Marrowbone Hall. In 1769 the family named Crawley was living there. By 1799 the house was recorded on the ordnance Survey map as Bone Hall, All trace of the house is now gone.

The house we knew as the Hollies main office was built around 1850 for the Family Lewins, this must have replaced the old hall. by 1860 the Lewins had left and was used as a working farm by a Harry Brown until 1888.

In 1900 George Woodman brought the land know then as the Hollies estate. He was knighted in 1905 and would have been what we would call a property developer. he lived then at the Grange Mottingham, and was the Sheriff of London in 1904/5. In 1902 he borrowed £12,000 from the city of Glasgow Life Assurance Company and brought from the Local Council of Bexley the land around the farm to the size of 167 acres.

1902 the site was acquired by the Poor Law Union of Deptford and Greenwich, and became known as Lamorbey Children’s home. many children from the Greenwich hospital and the poor house were sent to the home on its opening on October 30th 1902.

The nearby School of Burnt oak lane was built for the schooling of the children of the home.

The home was originally called The Greenwich Children’s Home Burnt Oak Lane Sidcup Kent before being taken over from Greenwich Board of Guardians in 1930 renamed Sidcup Residential School but in July 1930 it was again renamed Lamorbey Residential School.

It became The Hollies Children’s Home in 1950, it was then passed to Southwark Borough Council in 1965 and administered by them until its closure in 1998.

In the early days of the home all the cottages were named after trees in alphabetical order. They went like this: Acacia, Almond, Cedar, Chestnut, Elder, Elm, Hawthorn, Hazel, Laburnum, Laurel, Lilac, Maple, Mulberry, Myrtle, Olive, Palm, Pine, Poplar, Rowan, Sycamore. Each cottage had its appropriate tree on the lawn near the cottage. Those were the girls' cottages with fifteen girls in each, all ages from four years to sixteen years. The boys' houses were known as blocks which were much larger and held many more boys in each block. They were also named after trees. There were five of them: the Oaks, the Limes, the Firs, the Beeches and Ash. With the main house being called the Hollies this was always the the main office block. Some time over the the years many of the old cottage names disappeared and the names replaced, while the big houses stayed the same until its closure, Why? I can not establish but the final list of cottage names were. Acacia, Cedar, Elm, Japonica, Hazel, Larch, Laurel, Linden, (nursery) Maple, Myrtle, Palm, Pine, Poplar, Rowan, Vine, Willow, Wisteria, Sickbay, 60,70,78 and 80 Halfway Street.

From recent papers found. The original estimate to build the whole home dated 21st June 1900 was £114.132.00.

It is now quite a sort after area to live while the building have remained unchanged on the outside many more buildings have been added, even so anyone that lived there over the years would still know it as it was, less the wide open spaces in which we had in which to play, the Woods still remain as does the swimming pool gym and the water tower.

This brief history has been put together by Paul & Barbara Krawczynski, Martin Barnett and taken in part from research of DR John Mercer who has kindly given his permission for our use.

Copyright © 2003 Paul Krawczynski