What is the “Cottage System” at Dr Graham’s Homes? ~ Dr Graham’s Homes

There are a lot of unique things about Dr Graham’s Homes, the school in Kalimpong, India, where our sponsored children live and study. But few are more famous and enduring than the Cottage System, an institution that goes all the way back to the early 1900s.

If you’re new to the world of the Homes, you may wonder what these “cottages” are and why they’re so important. Here’s a quick guide to the system…

What are the Cottages?

Put simply, they are the boarding quarters where the pupils live – not just our sponsored children but many of the fee-paying pupils too. Instead of being clustered in a single building, they’re spread throughout the campus. This is one reason why early visitors to the school began to refer to it as the “children’s village”. There are currently 15 Cottages housing children, and they nestle alongside the main classrooms, staff accommodation, chapel, the playing fields, and more. The first Cottage, Woodburn, officially opened on 4 November 1901. Each is named after a benefactor whose donation helped to build them.

How were they created?

Like many things at DGH, they were the brainchild of founder John Anderson Graham. They were actually inspired by a concept he had seen in Scotland – a rural orphanage for children from the Glasgow slums, known as Quarrier’s Village. Like that institution, Dr Graham wanted his Homes to be nurturing and transformative. “It was to be no Victorian orphanage – austere, forbidding and loveless,” writes James Minto in his biography, Dr Graham of Kalimpong. “His children’s village of the Himalayas was to be a place of sunshine, flowers, fresh hill air and, above all, a place where the children could find themselves.”

What was the purpose of the Cottages?

The main aim was to create a “home from home” for the boarding pupils, many of whom had no home at all, either because they had been abandoned by their families or because their parents had died. Each Cottage had a mix of age groups, and that remains the case today. As the school’s website puts it: “This enables the children to live more like a family, with the older children nurturing and caring for the younger ones. It helps children of all ages realise their roles and responsibilities, and they learn to grow up interdependently and to love and care for each other.” The youngest children live together in the Lucia King Nursery - boys and girls together - after which they move on to a cottage of older children, boys’ and girls’ cottages being situated in quite separate parts of the school campus.

What are the “Uncles and Aunties”?

These are the traditional names for the staff members who look after the children. They live in the Cottages with the pupils and help them with their household chores, such as cooking, washing and cleaning. Like stand-in parents, they have a huge impact on the children as they grow up at the school. “In the Lucia King Nursery, they help you with everything – food, hygiene, clothing, and so on,” explains David, one of our former sponsored pupils. “As you get older, they help with studies. They nurtured and guided me. They helped to shape my character and personality.”

What else happens at the Cottages?

Not surprisingly, the children soon come to identify very strongly with their allotted Cottage. Particularly when it comes to the inter-Cottage competitions! Every year, the school lays on awards for everything from singing and debating to sport, theatre and even gardening. The most “coveted and closely contested” of all is the award for Best All-Round Cottage. For a flavour of the inter-Cottage contests, see this article by one of our trustees, Pat Lomax: Dr Graham’s Homes: a photo journal.

It says a lot about the Cottage System that pupils remain attached to them long after they leave Kalimpong. “Friendships forged in the Cottage last a lifetime, beyond school,” the DGH website explains. And that’s important to our work as a charity too. The DGHUK sponsorship scheme is designed to give vulnerable children the love, encouragement and tools they need for a new start in life. The Cottages are a very special part of how that happens.

Interested in finding out how you can sponsor a child at Dr Graham’s Homes? We’d love to hear from you! Head to our Get Involved section, or drop us a line by phone, form or email.