Very few people know about the Cottage Homes, an orphanage established at Medomsley in the 1890s by Gateshead Borough Council. It was the model of what an orphanage should be. The children, boys and girls, lived in family-sized houses or "cottages", each with a house "mother" and "father" who looked after their group.
The children were well fed and clothed and given an education at the local Medomsley school, and both boys and girls were taught a trade so that they could have a good start in life. It was in stark contrast to the poverty most working-class children lived in at the time.
Jim Clarke was an orphan brought up in the Cottage Homes in the 1930s, and he said being sent there saved his life. He began to write down the story of the homes, and in his research he came across the "Lost Boys": young men raised in the Cottage Homes who joined up in the First World War, were sent to the Front and never returned.
"They had literally gone to oblivion."
Jim was very upset to find that their names appeared on no memorial, either in this country or in France. Because the boys had no family and had come to the Cottage Homes from different parts of the country, they joined up in the places of their birth, as far away as Scotland, the Midlands and West Yorkshire. When they were killed, no one mourned them. No one knew them, or where they belonged.
Jim made it his mission in life to record their stories and to have their sacrifice commemorated in the place they knew as home: Medomsley village and Medomsley Church.
At a loss how to do it, he came to Consett Library for help from the late John Milburn, a volunteer who helped the public with family tree research and was very knowledgeable about First World War military records. With the library staff, the Durham Record Office (now The Story) and the DLI Museum, all moved by the fate of the orphans, Jim succeeded in having the Lost Boys' lives and deaths recorded, and a commemorative plaque honouring them placed in Medomsley Church, before his death.
Along the way, John Milburn discovered that Jim, although an orphan, had two siblings he never knew existed. Jim was reunited with them before he died.
On show at Consett Library all November
The story is the centrepiece of a display donated to the Consett & District Heritage Initiative by Jim's son, Phil Clarke. The whole Cottage Homes and Lost Boys display will be exhibited at Consett Library until the end of November, and Phil will give several Lost Boys talks there during the month. Ask at Consett Library for dates and details.
Open day: Tuesday 3 November, 10am to 3pm, Park Lodge, Consett & Blackhill Park. Free, all welcome.
Words supplied by Consett & District Heritage Initiative
