Rose Cottage Home For Girls, Dickleburgh

This home had already been running for ten years when it became part of the Waifs and Strays' Society in the summer of 1888. Mr and Mrs Brandreth founded Rose Cottage in 1878 as a certified home for the reception of “workhouse orphans”. These children were sent to the Home by local groups (Poor Law Unions), such as the Norfolk and Suffolk Guardians of the Poor.

There seems to have been a high demand placed on Rose Cottage, because the Brandreth’s opened an additional home in 1885 (Lee Cottage). Both these homes joined the Society on July 1st 1888. By this time, fifty girls had already passed through the two cottages.

Rose Cottage could house twenty girls, aged between seven and twelve. New children would arrive at the Home with all their worldly possessions, which usually amounted to very little. According to Mrs Brandreth, one girl came into the cottage ‘clutching only a chestnut and a penny’. Most of the children who arrived were illiterate, and the girls all attended the local school to help them develop some basic skills. Outside school hours, the girls were trained in housework and laundry, so that they could move on to careers in domestic service.

We believe that Rose Cottage closed in 1912 as it disappears from our records in that year.