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Julie Leek's search for her roots led her to a long-forgotten children"s home and the truth about the mother she hardly knew. Now she asks the Nottingham Evening Post to help piece together more details about the story.

To Julie Leek, her mother was a stranger. It is only in recent months, as she searches into her mother's background, that she is uncovering the tragic details of her life ... and her real name.

The story begins early in the life of Gladys Mary Green. After the death of her mother when Gladys was under two years of age, she was placed in the old Beeston Children's Home which was on Imperial Road - now the site of the Silverwood Nursing Home.

She lived there until 1945, when, at 13, she was adopted and given the name of Lilian Audrey Freeman.

Julie has resolved to find out as much as she can about the institution and what life was like for the children there, particularly in the 1930s and 40s.

"My mother had a very sad life. It started tragically when her mother died when she was under two, and ended tragically in 1985 when she took her own life.
"We were estranged for many years, and I now realise that I never really knew her. It transpires that even the name I knew her by, Lilian Audrey Freeman, was given to her when she was adopted. I believe that we are all profoundly affected by events which take place in our childhood, and the key to my getting to know this 'stranger' was to learn about her early life."

Julie has been able to add more pieces to the jigsaw after a remarkable reunion with her mother's eldest sister, Joan, who was also placed in the children's home together with a brother and another sister.

Joan lost touch with Gladys Mary in the mid-1950s when she married and left the area but recently, having lost her husband and other sister, she decided to try to find Gladys. A notice in the Evening Post personal column reached Julie and a reunion was set up with Joan, who now lives in Wales, and her other niece, Jill Hughes.

"Being reunited with Joan has been a bitter sweet experience for me," Julie observes. "My mother virtually abandoned my sister and I when we were young children.
"Jill was adopted, and the first time we ever met was after she got in touch with me when we were both in our 20s.
"My grandparents on my father's side raised me, despite having had eight children of their own! I was very bitter, and hadn't had any contact with my mother for over 30 years.
"However, Joan was able to tell me details about their upbringing in the children's home during the 1930s/40s which helped me to understand my mother's actions, and how, never having had a mother herself, she didn't understand how to be one."

The Children's Home at Beeston was opened in the 1880s by Miss Kate Bayley, and was operated as a privately run charitable institution until 1947. It was home to around 40 children at any one time. These children attended the local schools and most of the boys were enrolled in Beeston Parish Church choir. This being the case, it might be assumed that lots of information about the children's home would be readily available. However, when Julie contacted Broxtowe Borough Council, Beeston Civic Society, Beeston Historical Society and the Local History Department at the University of Nottingham, it became apparent that there was a real dearth of information. None of these organisations possessed as much as a photograph of the building!

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