The Home for Mothers and Babies and Training School for District Midwives opened in May 1905, with the stated objectives of professionalising midwifery.

[1] The people behind it were Charles Escreet, an Anglican priest; Alice Gregory, midwife; Leila Parnell and Maud Cashmere.

[3] The facility opened with six beds but soon expanded to twelve, and in 1915 amalgamated with the British Lying-In Hospital, Holborn, central London.

[3] ("Lying-in" is a term for childbirth, even then old-fashioned and now archaic, referring to the long bedrest prescribed for new mothers in their postpartum confinement.

[2] In addition, an evacuation hospital was set up in Brenchley, Kent, in a private house called Moatlands, purchased in 1944 for this purpose.