McCredie Cottage

McCredie Cottage was established in 1970 by the Child Welfare Department. It was located on the property of Linnwood Hall (or Lynwood Hall) in Holroyd, south of Guildford, in New South Wales. McCredie Cottage was a home for about 27 preschool aged children who were state wards, and who were waiting to be placed in permanent foster care. Children from the Northern Territory were also sent here. It closed in 1993.

McCredie cottage was opened on 17 July 1970, to accommodate 26 preschool aged children, all wards of the state. A Child Welfare Department report states that the building was the ‘first cottage home to be specially designed and constructed for preschool children’. The report contained the following description of the philosophy behind the design of the building:

The needs of the children have received special consideration in the architecture, such that the home, which is in fact quite extensive, never gives the impression to its true size … proportions and perspective have been so designed that no child will feel overawed or dwarfed by the establishment.

McCredie cottage included a self-contained flat for senior female wards, who would assist in the care of the children, with the intention that they would gain experience for future employment as live-in child care workers.

McCredie cottage housed 26 to 28 children at any one time. The total number of admissions each year was about triple the average number of residents at a time, reducing demand at other facilities, and most children were only there until such time as they could be placed in foster care. (Departmental Reports, 1971 and 1972).

According to research done by the staff of the Northern Territory Department of Health, it was a place where children from the Northern Territory were sent.

At the end of the 1970s, McCredie cottage was adapted to cater for children up to the age of eight. Faulds House was opened on 23 April 1976. It was designed to provide accommodation for girls who were of primary and high school age, and attended local schools. The intention, according to the Department, was to provide ‘a family type setting with minimum restrictions’. When Faulds House opened Linnwood was closed and renovated ‘to be reopened as a hostel for working age girl wards’.