Children’s Home

When I asked if any were known locally as the Red House it says this:

That's a good question! Let's look back at the list of children's homes in Surrey during the 1950s that we mentioned:
* Princess Mary Village Homes, Addlestone
* Southern Railway Servants' Orphanage, Woking
* Beechholme, Banstead (we know the houses here were named after trees and shrubs)
* Oakfields, Wokingham (just over the Surrey border)
* Woodrough, Guildford
* Lesslands, Godalming
* Sutton Park, Guildford
* Bognor Regis, Surrey Children's Home (now in West Sussex)
* Linkfield House, Redhill
Going through this list, none of the names explicitly include "Red House" or a very similar variation.
It's possible that:
* A house within one of these larger homes might have been informally known as "the Red House" due to its appearance, but this wasn't its official name. This was the case with the tree and shrub names at Beechholme.
* There was another smaller children's home in Surrey during the 1950s that wasn't captured in the initial search results.
* The name "Red House" might be a detail that is remembered differently over time.
To investigate further, you might want to:
* Check the Surrey History Centre archives specifically for any mention of "Red House" in connection with children's homes.
* Look for local history resources or personal accounts related to these specific homes. Someone who lived there might recall an informally named building.
It's interesting how these details can sometimes be remembered differently!

Just in case ijustwantpeace2020 is still reading this thread -

There used to be a Red House at 23 Park Hill Rise, Croydon CR0 5FJ. When I knew of it, it was a sheltered scheme for the elderly. I don’t know what it was prior to that.

That makes sense. It was just called the red house loosely, not formally. That makes the puzzle even more difficult.

Why was there a Catholic nun in the picture if you were Jewish?

I remember when the internet came to be, I was searching for an orphanage of my relative, coming up with nothing, only to find they had changed the name in the 30s.

There was a Red House school near Buxton in Norfolk.it took in children from all over the country. It has had a very chequered history and it has been in the news many times over the years and is in the news again even though it closed down years ago.

Allegations of abuse, dodgy staff and ill treatment.
It changed hands many times over the years and as far as I recall the last people to run it were some sort of cult from Sweden.