Local historian Harold Heys remembers Bull Hill which still means something special to many from Darwen

A DARRENER born and bred! Not these days, sadly. Newcomers are much more likely to be born in Blackburn or even a few miles up the M65 in Burnley.

It’s over 30 years since anyone was actually born in Darwen, other than by happy accident, but for hundreds of local folk the magic of some 40 years of Bull Hill maternity home has never dimmed.

I’ve been asking around. And the response has been amazing.

Everyone looked back with affection to the old place. There wasn’t one dissenting voice. The bright ambience, the friendly staff, the warm camaraderie, the excellent food … all came in for praise.

But there was one recurring and unexpected theme …the wild rabbits who were a constant source of delight.

Bull Hill was on the edge of the moors and the rabbits used to gather in the late morning for lunch on the lawn.

Wilma Taylor recalled the chef apologising one day for the non-appearance of carrots which had been on the menu. It was later that patients saw the rabbits on the grass munching … chopped carrots.

“Great fun to be with other mums,” said Maggie Charnock. “The food was amazing.” Eileen Fort described it as “a lovely place.”

“It didn’t feel like a hospital,” said Irene Thornley. “Heaven,” said Carol Hargreaves.

John Halliwell recalled that his auntie Audrey Smethurst had been cook there for many years. Sister Margaret O’Reilly got a few mentions.

Noreen Yates, now 96, told me: “I was a midwife there for over 20 years and enjoyed every minute.”

Cindie Cooper was a midwife for the final 10 years and, as key-holder, remembered clearing the cellars and locking up for the last time.

“I was heartbroken,” she told me.

Pauline Lightbown said she gave birth to the first baby girl there on April 19, 1949. Susan Bennett Riding recalled that she just managed to have her youngest daughter Zoe there in February 1988. It closed down in the May.

Bull Hill had been under threat for several years and there was a petition to keep it open. To no avail.

In the late Eighties, the days of “cottage hospitals” were numbered. Bramley Meade at Whalley, and the maternity unit Accrington Victoria closed soon afterwards.

Queen’s Park Hospital, Blackburn, took over looking after mums in the area. Later, Darwen babies were born at the new Royal Blackburn.

In 2010 maternity facilities were extended in Burnley and now there are “birthing centres” at Blackburn and Burnley.

The typhoid epidemic of 1874 led to a demand for an isolation hospital in Darwen.

But it was another 15 years before Bull Hill was opened in 1889 principally for the treatment of scarlet fever. Smallpox was a recurring problem.

A new typhoid fever wing was opened in 1910 and a nurses’ home was built in 1926.

Seventeen houses now stand on the five-acre site which is called Woodleigh Chase.