Famous connections

Strolling through the streets of Manchester yesterday I soon found myself outside House of Fraser on Deansgate. The building has been a large department store since 1835 when Thomas Kendal, James Milne and Adam Faulkner bought the shop. It has traded under various names before becoming part of the House of Fraser chain in 2005, but is still known to most Mancunians’ as Kendal Milne. The sight of the building got me thinking about our own connection to one of these famous families, the Milnes, and how they have contributed to the charity’s history...

Belmont House in the 1950s

After the First World War the charity saw a need to move out of the city centre into the fresh air of the countryside and began to search the surrounding area for suitable land in which to build a ‘Children’s Garden Village’. The Committee looked into a plot of land that was for sale in Cheadle, Cheshire for £5,700. This incorporated 22.5 acres of land and Belmont House, which was the family home of the Milnes. This house became the first children’s home on the site opened to around 40 destitute girls.

Interior of Belmont House, pre-1920s

From this point onwards the Refuge’s Annual Reports show an ongoing connection with the Milne family and the Kendal Milne Department store. Up until at least the Second World War there were regular monetary contributions from various members of the Milne family. Further donations were also received from the Kendal Milne store every year, both as cash contributions and, at Christmas, in the form of presents for the children.

Donations from the 1925 Annual Report

In 1927 the Milne family contributed their biggest gift to the charity. This took the form of a Sanatorium, which was built in the grounds of Belmont to provide medical treatment to the children in the homes. The hospital cost £6000 to build and was erected and equipped, according to the charity’s annual report, ‘in memory of John Dewhurst Milne who lived and died at Belmont’. It was officially opened as the Milnes-Perrins sanatorium on the 28th May by Sir Alfred Hopkinson, K.C, M.P, after being handed over to the Trustees by Mr Walter Milne. The majority of the contribution came from Mrs Dyson-Perrins (nee Freida Milnes) who funded the building. She also endowed the ‘Alec Milne cot’ for £600 (around £18,000 in today’s money) in memory of her brother, from 1927 until her death in 1967. The rest of the Milne family funded the furnishings. When the sanatorium was no longer required for medical purposes in 1954, it was converted into a children’s home. Later, in 1963, the building was used for extra classrooms for the Bethesda school with the permission of Mrs Dyson-Perrins. It was closed and pulled down around the 1970s.

Sanatorium, built 1927

The charity’s connections with the Milne family was finally broken with the sale of Belmont house and some of its surrounding land in 1983. Their generosity however, will be forever remembered by the Together Trust!