BBC drama, Call the Midwife has grown a massive fan base since it began back in 2012.
The show is inspired by Jennifer Worth who worked as a midwife in London's Poplar from the 1950s to 60s, as well as the sisters of Saint John the Divine.
Call the Midwife keeps with its inspiration, with it being set in the East End of London, although the midwife home of Nonnatus House is not actually real.
However, the show's creators were inspired by the sisters and Worth's real home where they lived and worked at St Frideswide’s Mission House in Lodore Street and now fans can visit the house.
The real story of Call the Midwife's Nonnatus House
The Order of Sisters was established back in 1848 near Euston in Fitzroy Square where they trained as nurses and midwives.
Some of the nurses would be sent off to work in Crimea during the war alongside Florence Nightingale as well as to Germany.
Later, in the 1880s, the nuns were invited to Poplar by the Church of All Saints Poplar, seeing them move and begin work in the East End community.
During the 1950s and 60s, the sisters and midwives became a key part of the community as areas continued to recover from the war.
RECOMMENDED READING
Locals to Poplar shared that Call the Midwife does show how fond the residents were of the sisters and nurses, sharing that they did use to go around on their bikes in uniform.
Unlike in the show, Nonnatus House was not condemned but the nuns did move from the area to Birmingham in 1976 after nursing work in the Poplar was taking over the government.
But fans of the show can still visit the house that inspired Nonnatus House, St Frideswide’s Mission House in Lodore Street, East London now.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here