The seaside home

“We are again in the midst of summer joys and sunshine, and to many of your readers it will mean happy times in the fields and woods, or by the cool seashore. But to hundreds pent up in the great city it will mean weariness and wasting. Dirt and squalor are bad enough in the winter, but sunshine and beauty of summer seem to exaggerate these miseries.”

- Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser (May 1888).

In the dreariness of our so-called summer in Manchester this year, the above quote may seem a little mocking, but so read an article in a local newspaper in 1888 calling for funds to send a ‘sick and pale-faced child’ to the Seaside Home at Lytham.

Seaside Home, Lytham

This service had opened on 30th June 1883 for those children who were not in need of a permanent home but were ‘delicate’ in health and would see the benefit of rest, a change of scenery and proper nourishment. The building was funded by interested parties with one bedroom named the ‘Broughton Park Room’ after it was furnished by the ladies of Broughton Park. This group gave an annual donation of £75 to the service. Around £6 was needed to provide a week’s holiday for a child. A change of clothes had to be provided.

Tanllwyfan, c. 1920

This first home at Lytham contained 20 beds, but the number of applications being received by the charity far outstripped this. As early as 1896 searches were being made for larger premises in the area, which also included its own land. It was not until 1915 however, that the service moved out of its premises in Lytham and across to a much larger house in Old Colwyn, North Wales. This included a garden, seven acres of fields and could accommodate 46 children. The large grounds provided playing fields for the children, as well as a small farm. Here cows, pigs, chickens and a donkey were kept and some of the land was cultivated to allow for vegetables to be grown.

General rules for admission c.1930s

The home continued as a recuperating agency until 1939 when Bethesda, a home for children with disabilities on George Street, Manchester, was evacuated to Tanllwyfan for the period of the War. The house reopened as a Convalescent Home in 1953 for five years, when the building was once again taken over by Bethesda. In 1960 it closed down as a respite home and moved into residential accommodation.