There are four more pages dedicated to the Dr Garrett's story:
1: Christmas at Dr Garrett's.
2: Dave Dooley's memories.
3: Your pictures.
4: Add your own comments.

"There must be about 70,000 children who've been to Dr Garrett's, scattered all over the world," writes Brian Gregson. "It was set up in the 1910s to get children out of the smog of Manchester for a few weeks.

Dr Garrett himself ran a poor clinic in Manchester, although he also had some very wealthy patients. He became ill himself and it was suggested that he move to Conwy to recuperate and made a remarkable recovery.

He saw that it must be true about the effect of smog and the bad atmosphere in a city and so he brought some kids from the poor clinic over to his house for a few weeks and watched them make great progress.

So it snowballed from there. Wealthy benefactors raised funds to buy five more houses and Dr Garrett's opened properly in 1916.

After he died in 1923, his wife carried on in his memory, and so it was known as the Dr Garrett Memorial Home. When she died in 1938 it was handed over to Manchester City Council.

It gradually changed from being a place for poor children to get away from the Manchester smog to being a place which helped families while their problems were being sorted out. There was no stigma, we just provided respite care - a form of health and social intervention - a nice title that hid a lot of poverty, illness, social deprivation and family breakdowns.

It was a very rewarding job. You can tell from all this interest what the children thought of the place. All the letters and petitions raised in Manchester could have filled a special edition of the Manchester Evening News when it was under threat of closure. It was phenomenal because it had become an institution to the people of Manchester. If mum was going into hospital, no-one had to worry about the children - they would just go to Dr Garrett's for a few weeks while things were sorted out.

It did become expensive, but the cost of running Dr Garrett's for a year was the same as putting 10 children in care - so to save just 10 families from collapsing made it worth the money.

It closed in 1989 for political and financial reasons. Despite having lots of people involved in trying to help us stay open and having the Home Office recognise that we were ahead of our time in terms of community care, Manchester City Council was determined to close places like us down, so that was the end of Dr Garrett's.

The council and library would love me to create a website or something with all the material I have because they're always inundated by enquiries - I'm going to do my best.

I ran Dr Garrett's from the mid 1970s until it closed in 1989 and I collected what was there for safekeeping. There were albums of photos of mayor's visits, happy days, arrival days, carnival days (we were always the biggest participants in the carnival and won lots of certificates for the floats).

Before handing them over to the library I am endeavouring to raise the money for a website. I feel that the number of enquiries over the year merits the photographs being available for people to see wherever they may live. If anyone has any ideas for funding sources, I would be pleased to hear from them."