Address: Hadley (Hadleigh) Common, Barnet EN5 5QG
Open: 1966-1985 (Closed and children moved to Colgrain in Muswell Hill)
Number of ISN survivors that lived at Dixton children’s home. 11: 5 girls and 6 boys
Numbers of children named by ISN survivors as living at Dixton children’s home:20: 13 boys and 7 girls
Numbers of children named in council documents as living at Dixton children’s home: 1971 – 14 children age 0-7 yrs and 1971 15 children age 2-7 years (Recruitment advertisements). In 1985 a former member of staff wrote about 6 boys and 4 staff.
Residential staff named by ISN survivors as working at Dixton children’s home: 7 men and 25 women
Life at Dixton children’s home
Dixton was a white house with 2 large white gates and a garage on the right hand side. In 1985 a former member of staff told ISN that the children went on trips with staff to Crystal Palace, The Natural History Museum and Hampstead Heath.
Some of the girls describe sharing a room with two others and the boys room being next to the girls room. Staff had one room. The children were sometime as young as 2 or 3 years old but most were around the ages of 12 and 13 years.
One male survivor spoke of living in Elwood Street children’s home and spending Christmas at Dixton in 1982. On Sundays the children were taken to the local Monkton Hadley church.
Two women survivors have spoken about strangers assaulting them by getting into the home in the 70s and having having to run away at night into the surrounding countryside. One slept in the middle of a large field to hide.
Jeffrey Reynolds was convicted of indecent assault at Wood Green Crown Court in N0vember 2018. He was a volunteer with Dixton and the offence was against a boy resident in the home in the 80s.He received a prison sentence of 4 years.
When the home closed in 1985, Anne Payne who had been the Dixton superintendent since the early 70s moved to work in 18 Highbury Grove childrens home.
