This blog has been researched and written by Hilary Love, one of the volunteers on our maternity care project. Project volunteers are researching maternity care in Northumberland with particular focus on Castle Hills Maternity Home, Berwick, and Mona Taylor Maternity Home, Stannington. We are also researching in less detail some of the other Maternity Homes in the county. This blog provides a brief history of maternity provision at Hilcrest, Alnwick,Northumberland.
Hillcrest was originally a private family home in Alnwick built for Charles Percy (1851-1929), a prominent Alnwick solicitor. Between 1918 and 1922 Charles Percy was M.P. for Tynemouth. The 1921 census lists the widowed Charles living at Hillcrest with three live-in servants. The census record notes that Hillcrest comprised 15 rooms. By 1939 Richard Simpson, a maltster, was living at the property.
In April 1952 Hillcrest was opened as a maternity home with eleven beds. The opening ceremony was performed by Helen, Duchess of Northumberland. The first child to be born there was a daughter to Mr. and Mrs. Deeble of Alnwick. The Duchess presented a mug to mother and child.
In the late 1980s there was a proposal to close Hillcrest and transfer maternity services to Ashington. There was much local opposition to the closure – women marched through the town in support of retention. In response, the Health Authority decided that, if local people could raise £100,000, a new unit would be built in the grounds of Alnwick Infirmary. A new 8-bed unit, attached to Alnwick Infirmary, was given the go ahead when the appeal total was reached.
Such was the success of the campaign that construction of the new unit began just eighteen months after Northumberland Health Authority proposed to refer all Alnwick patients to Ashington Hospital. The total cost of the build was £472,000 with £372,000 coming from the sale of the old Hillcrest Hospital. An article and photograph in The Weekly Courier of 17 May 1989, features work starting on the new unit. The photograph showed the Duchess of Northumberland on a mechanical digger laying the first turf. A donation of 20 tons of sand from their depot in Powburn, was received from a north-east company, Ryton Sand and Gravel. Mr. Bill Hugonin of Alnwick Castle Estates received delivery of the sand on behalf of the Hillcrest Committee. Mr. Hugonin praised the local and regional press for publicizing the work of the committee and for getting behind the campaign.
The new unit was officially opened was on 10 October 1990, although it was open to patients a little while before that. Maternity services continue to be delivered from the Hillcrest Unit today.
So many lovely memories of Hillcrest. My mum had the last 3of her 12 children there. 15 of her 28 grandchildren born in Hillcrest or the new unit. I had my first daughter at the old Hillcrest in 1985. Her Dad was a fireman and they drove the fire engine up to the hospital with a blue light to drop him off the day she was born
Thank you.