THE bell rang out just as it always did.

As the chimes echoed across town Charlie Kinder walked his friends back to Kilrie children's home.

Usually he left them at the front door and headed home to Warren Avenue.

But when a staff member asked him if he wanted to go in for a cup of cocoa, intrigue got the better of him.

"I couldn't believe how big it was," said Charlie, now in his 70s. "I lived in a little house with seven other people so I'd never seen anything like it before. But I loved every minute of being there."

The grand oak staircase near the entrance of Kilrie was the first thing Charlie noticed.

"It was the most wonderful thing I'd ever seen," he said. "It was just magnificent."

But from the outside it was the large glass dome on the roof that captured his imagination.

"It made the building look so grand and important," he said. "It's the thing that everyone noticed."

More than 60 years on from his first visit to Kilrie, Charlie still lives in Warren Avenue behind the Victorian building.

Over the past few weeks he has watched builders dismantle the former children's home brick by brick.

"I saw them take the dome off very carefully," he said. "It took them a couple of hours and I watched it all.

"Then they put it on the back of a lorry and drove it away, taking so many happy memories with it."

Built in 1892, Kilrie was originally called Heath Grange and later renamed Thrutchley Palace after the family that lived there.

When the Thrutchley's left Robert Charles Longridge moved his family into the grand house.

He had already lived in a house called Kilrie and took the name with him when he moved.

During the First World War he allowed the house to be used as a Red Cross hospital for injured soldiers.

In 1922 the house - complete with beautiful Flemish gables and Edwardian windows - was handed over to the Ordination Test School before they sold it for £3,000 in 1925.

Then, in the 1930's, Kilrie became a children's home until its closure in 1998.

Over the years Charlie and his wife Isobel made friends with a number of the children who lived there.

And one, who they only know as Wayne, still pops in to see them when he is passing through Knutsford.

"When he lived at Kilrie he used to come round and take our dog for a walk," said Charlie. "He lives in Wales now and is happily married, but he still comes to see us occasionally."

The couple remember Wayne's torment when his sister left him - and Kilrie - behind to live in a foster home.

"It was hard for him," said Isobel. "But he was such an honest and decent lad I can't understand why no one fostered him too.

"Maybe it was because he was hyperactive a lot of the time."

But not all the children at Kilrie were as decent as Wayne.

About 17 years ago a little boy threw a knife over the hedge that separated the couple's garden from the playground.

It was a summer's day and the ground-floor bathroom window was wide open.

Isobel was bathing her four-year-old grandson when the knife landed just inches from him in the soapy water.

"That's the worst thing to have happened," said Isobel. "I dread to think what would have happened if my grandson had been sat at the other end of the bath."

But every accident - including many broken windows - was followed up by an apology from the young culprit and a payment for damages.

"The little boy that threw the knife came round with a member of staff," said Isobel. "He said sorry lots of times and I really believe he didn't mean to throw it into the window."

Despite the few tearaways Isobel and Charlie believed that most children were happy in their surroundings.

But four years ago - just before Kilrie was closed for good - it emerged that between 1979 and 1990 life was far from happy for many of the children.

In May 1997 care worker Bruce McLean was jailed for nine years after a jury at Chester Crown Court found him guilty of indecently assaulting 10 children over an 11-year period at the home.

When sentencing him Judge Huw Daniel described McLean as a classic paedophile who had formed a close bond with children in need of love - then taken advantage of them.

During the trial men wept as they told the story of their abuse at the hands of the former fireman.

One victim told the court that he was 11 when McLean touched him as they processed film together in Kilrie's darkroom.

"I didn't go back into the darkroom alone again," the boy, aged 28 at the time of the trial, told the jury.

Another man wept as he told the court how he had turned to drink and drugs to blot out the memory of his abuse at Kilrie.

The witness, who was 22 when he gave evidence, told how he had been molested in the bath and in a corridor when he was six.

He said taking drugs - such as cannabis, amphetamines, speed and ecstasy - and drinking bottles of brandy was his way of coping with realising he had been abused.

"I didn't want to tell anyone," said the man in court. "I was taking a lot of drugs to subside the pain of thinking about it."

Since the trial a number of victims have made compensation claims against the home's owners Cheshire County Council.

Solicitor Peter Garsden, who is representing many of them, told the Knutsford Guardian last year that his clients would be glad to see the back of Kilrie.

"They no doubt have many unhappy memories of the building and will be glad to see an end to it in terms of bricks and mortar and psychologically," he said.

In December 1997 Cheshire County Council announced they would close the Northwich Road home - where only eight children lived.

And by February 1999 the building was sold - for an unconfirmed £1million - to developers Seddon Homes who plan to build 23 homes on the site.

Although many of McClean's victims will be glad to see the back of Kilrie, for many its demolition is tinged with sadness.

"It breaks my heart to see it being demolished," said Charlie. "There is so much history in it and now the site looks like something out of the blitz.

"And another peace of Knutsford's heritage is taken away as a pile of bricks in big lorries."

mgillies@guardiangrp.co.uk