Town & Country
ON June 23, to mark the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, Ashridge House in Hertfordshire will host a special celebration in honour of the 2,700 babies born in its temporary, wartime maternity ward—and they’re all invited.
During the Second World War, the Grade I-listed house near Berkhamsted, a former home of Henry VIII that was rebuilt in the early 19th century, acted as an extension to the emergency wing of London’s Charing Cross and University College Hospitals, with expectant mothers and others evacuated there during air raids. It was also the first to receive evacuees from Dunkirk. More than 20,000 patients were treated at Ashridge and all of the 2,700 wartime babies born within its neo-Gothic walls, as well as their descendants, are invited to come and share their stories and help build a sense of community for the ‘Ashridge babies’.
This extraordinary project has been a few years in the making and it started when Lucy de Gassicke, director of sales and marketing, began meeting people at Ashridge events and weddings or in its Bakehouse Café who shared that they or a parent had been born there. ‘Ashridge was commandeered by the Ministry of Works one day before war broke out in 1939 and babies were born here up until 1946, so we’re talking about a significant period of time,’ she explains. ‘We put the call out on local radio and social media two or three months ago and, so far, 103 “Ashri
