Duxhurst Industrial Farm Colony (1922, Lady Henry Somerset Homes; 1923, Princess Marie Louise Village for Gentlefolk)[2] was a British voluntary in-patient residential institution for the treatment and cure of habitual alcoholic women.

Early in 1903, however, owing to pressure from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the managers decided to admit selected cases committed under Section 1 of the Act for drunkenness and consequent neglect of children, the National Society undertaking to make full investigation respecting the moral character and general suitability of proposed cases.

Much importance was rightly directed to garden work, which occupied many inmates in open air and under glass; they helped in fruit culture and in the subsequent picking and despatch for market; they assisted in the care of bees and in the management of poultry, and they were employed in seed sorting and the like.

[8] Documenting the work done at Duxhurst, including statistics, anecdotes, and photographs, Lady Henry published Beauty for ashes (London, L. Upcott Gill & Son) in 1913.

[11][3] Profoundly impressed by the methods advocated by Frances Willard, Lady Henry made a special journey to the U.S. with her son, with the object of making her acquaintance.

[13] For the next six months, Dr. Greene was an intern in the hospital of Sherborn Reformatory Prison for Women, in South Framingham, Massachusetts.

A visit to this prison, on the initiative of Willard, gave Lady Henry the inspiration to found Duxhurst on her estate, a model reformatory for women inebriates in England.

[13] After careful study of the subject, the B.W.T.A., under the leadership of their President, Lady Henry Somerset, lifelong friend of Frances Willard, started in 1895 at Duxhurst, in Surrey, an Industrial Farm Colony for Inebriates, on lines which they believed to be sound and scientific, and which they hoped would make a sort of object lesson for the State.

Lady Henry found the recidivist alcoholic to be quarrelsome and spiteful and sent her back to London after three months,[14] despite the negative press coverage for her farm colony that Cakebread's ejection produced.

[20] Thought Duxhurst Farm Colony operated as an alcohol recovery home for several years, it was not licensed as a retreat until 1901, and, consequently, till that time, was not authorised to receive patients signing under the Act of 1879.

The NSPCC undertook to make full enquiry as to the moral character and general suitability of proposed inmates before recommending their admission.

This was accounted for by the fact that the agents of the society had exceptional means of obtaining information concerning the private life and circumstances of individual inmates.

But it must be remembered, owing to the exceptional means by which these inmates were selected, that Duxhurst was dealing with the best of reformatory work, and was able to do, with mild measures, what proved impossible in other places where committals were indiscriminate in character.

[8] Lady Somserset announced in 1907 that she intended to devote herself almost exclusively to charitable work, and would live mostly at her cottage on Duxhurst Industrial Farm Colony.

The site, a farm of 180 acres (73 ha), was situated in a green plateau surrounded by the ridge of the Surrey hills.

The cottage was approached by a white wicket gate, opening on to an old-fashioned red-tiled path, lined on either side with bright flower borders.

Straight away was the chief apartment of the cottage, a long, low room, which extended the full width of the building.

There were several small diamond-paned windows, with deep windowsills, whereon stood pots of musk, fuchsias and geraniums.

The open fireplace was copied from a New England design, which Lady Henry saw at Willard's cottage in the Catskill Mountains.

There was a carved sideboard, in shape something like a kitchen dresser, with crockery shelves above, which Lady Henry brought from Brittany.

There hangs Whittier and Holmes, Mary Wilkins, Neal Dow, Abraham Lincoln, Julia Ward Howe, Harriet beecher Stowe, and Frances Willard and her mother.

The prevailing woodwork of the cottage walls were plain boards, clear varnished in green, a very inexpensive, artistic, and clean style of decoration.

[34] The surplus income derived from the higher fees charged for residence in this part of the retreat went far towards assisting the poorer patients received into the "Village".

[33] Babies were admitted with their mothers, and a holiday home for children on the estate became a source of interest to the initial patients.

[3] There were women consigned to the Colony by the courts who were convicted of neglect of their children through drunkenness or other misdemeanors and who were sentenced to a detention which sometimes lasted three years.

It meant that the child, instead of drifting into the slums, would be cared for during the years that its mother was learning new ways and entering a new life.

This reconstructed building remained as a memorial to the founder, Lady Henry Somerset, and to her sister, Adeline Marie Russell, Duchess of Bedford.

The house stood in ample grounds, and a public elementary school was within the bounds of the Colony, at which the children, numbering about 50 in 1922, were taught.

It was replete with gaily coloured walls, pictures, statues, lamps burning, a side chapel, flowers, candles, incense, beautiful vestments, and a confessional that may have been like no other in England in that era.

At the time of the death of Lady Henry Somerset (April 1921) the Colony had grown considerably, and her project had accomplished remarkable results along the line of influencing the promotion of temperance and women’s work in England.