“I worked at a hairdresser’s in the village. I swept people’s hair and made coffee, and put people’s gowns on. I did that for 3 years. My boss, she was lovely. I made friends with Grace who was working there. I told Grace I was moving [from Hampton]… she was upset. She was like my family.”

“If the girls said they wanted something different [to eat], they were never bought anything different, it was always the same thing. And the cereals – “oh, we’re sick of cornflakes!”… You had what was put in front of you. If you didn’t want it you went without. You were never given a choice. I think that would have been nice.”

“[There was] the contrast between it being a very grand house, lovely grounds... but the people living there having quite enclosed lives… And again, certainly by today’s standards, it would be seen as very understaffed… It was almost like a little community away from everything else.

I think the staff did try and take people out and do things as much as they could, but that’s the trouble, if you’ve got 20 people to look after and there’s just 2 or 3 members of staff… you can’t take all the people out. It’s very difficult to do individualised activities”

“Social services came [late 1980s/90s]… and they said we’d all got to have locks on our doors, and we had a Yale key. The others had to put them on the board in the morning, and I thought “No, it’s their key, they could have had a string around their neck.” I flatly refused. They said “when you go out, will you leave your key?” I said “Why? You don’t need anything in my room.” Which they didn’t.”