Sea View Homes, Shoeburyness, Essex

I was inmate there from about 1965 to about 1970 for the third and final time with my two younger siblings. I was in Amethyst with Miss Hayman our house mother. I found it OK personally, and better than living with my mother. New clothes, holidays, parties but many many chores — peeling potatoes for 16 children and two staff, washing up before that in the evening but pocket money related to the chores. I shared the home with 15 other children. Some I went to school with. Some I made their beds besides mine because they were only 4 years old. We had two dormitories — boys and at the other end of the building the girls, with the house mother's residence in-between, just an office and bedroom. There is information on Facebook — not a happy place for most apart from only two defenders including myself. I came back to Shoeburyness in 1984, and had two part time gardening jobs in March of 1985 in Ulster Avenue and by then it was a housing estate. Sometime in 1974-75 I visited the place and it was derelict — smashed windows, deadly quiet with just the leaves rustling in the trees. We had a wooded area and probably could originally have seen the sea before Leitrim avenue was built. We had swings and two roundabouts a good distance apart from each other and children were not to mix from the other houses but we did. Some compared it to a concentration camp. Personally, I feel they tried but people in suits who forgot their childhood and put in minimum entertainment. But people later on tried with a firework display on the 5th of November and holidays away and Ford Motor Company parties and USAF Braintree parties where I got a basketball, with training and security in attendance. And a trip to France and many toys and books donated by really sweet people who had probably lost their own children.