Minden, also known as Strathmore, was the name of a house at Carlingford that was bought by Church of England Children’s Homes in 1913. It became the first property in the Carlingford Children’s Homes. It housed girls from 1913 to 1920 and from 1927 until the 1970s. It housed boys from 1918 to around 1926. It was demolished in the 1970s but the property is still owned by Anglicare.
John Ingersole, who grew up in Carlingford Church of England Boys’ Homes and has written a history of it, states that Minden was purchased from WK Gibbons in 1913 and opened by the Archbishop of Sydney as Carlingford Church of England Girls’ Home. This was an orphanage for frail girls ‘with Glebe still the base for the work’. Carlingford Church of England boys’ home was established in Cronulla in 1917. In 1920 the girls returned to Glebe.
Ingersole says that in 1918 Mrs Ebenezer Vickery gave eight acres of land next door to Minden, in order that the homes could expand. The foundation of a new home (Number 2, an extension to Minden) was laid in 1920 and the home opened in 1921.
Boys then lived at Minden until 1927, when they moved to a new building, Buckland House and, from around 1935, various cottages. Girls returned to Minden in 1927 and it remained a girls’ home until Carlingford Children’s Homes closed in the 1970s.