“IT MAY have been seen as a ‘school for crime’ to everyone on the outside. But to me it was home.”

Those were the words of Daniel Cooke, a former resident of Thornbury House, a controversial home for boys that has been open in Kidlington for almost 50 years.

The house is being knocked down and rebuilt with a new £1.4m building due to open next to the existing site in The Moors, in April.

But since it opened in 1963, originally as a ‘Borstal for troubled boys’ and later a children’s home, controversy has never been far away from the Oxfordshire County Council-run building.

Villagers once dubbed it a ‘school for crime’ after reports of violence and vandalism were linked back time and again to residents.

A pensioner told of having his war medals stolen, another elderly man claimed he had been attacked by a knife-wielding youth, shots had been fired from handguns, garden walls had been knocked down and burglaries were rife.

And in 2000, the boys of Thornbury House were denounced as ‘neighbours from hell’ at an angry public meeting.

But Mr Cooke, who grew up in different places around East Oxford said despite all the bad headlines about the house, it was the only place he and many other boys like him had ever been able to call home.

The former pupil of Northfield School, in Blackbird Leys, said: “For all of our swearing and swaggering, underneath we were like any other children. We were just scared and frightened.

“I’m sure a lot of people in Kidlington expected us to end up in prison, or worse, and I’m sure there are some that did happen to.

“But if I hadn’t been there and been given the chances I was, I would have ended up just another statistic.”

Mr Cooke, now 33 and a father-of-one, went to Thornbury House when he was 13.

He was taken into care when his mother, who was later diagnosed with a bi-polar disorder, was unable to look after him and his siblings, he said.

Mr Cooke remembers a Christmas at the home where staff gave him a gift of a tape player and a home-made Bob Marley compilation, songs he still cherishes today.

He said: “Christmas was obviously hard for us in the home.

“But it was also very warm.

“Staff with their own families would come back in and have lunch with us, even those who weren’t scheduled to work.

“It was a warm time.”

Mr Cooke now runs first aid and life-saving courses in Cornwall and does youth work in the community.

He added: “For all the bad stories, if it has helped one person make something of their life, then it has been a success.

awilliams@oxfordmail.co.uk