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BBC Call The Midwife: The True Story of Nonnatus House

The BBC drama Call the Midwife has gained a massive fan base since it began in 2012.

The show is inspired by Jennifer Worth, who worked as a midwife at London’s Poplar in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the Sisters of Saint John the Divine.

Call the Midwife maintains its inspiration as it is set in London’s East End, although the midwives’ home of Nonnatus House is not real.

However, the show’s creators drew inspiration from the sisters and the actual home of Worth, where they lived and worked at St Frideswide’s Mission House on Lodore Street, and now fans can visit the house.

The True Story of Call the Midwife’s Nonnatus House

The Order of Sisters was established in 1848 near Euston in Fitzroy Square, where they trained as nurses and midwives.

Some of the nurses would be sent to work in the Crimea during the war along with Florence Nightingale and also to Germany.

Later in the 1880s, the Poplar All Saints Church invited the nuns to Poplar and saw them move in and begin working in the East End community.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the sisters and midwives became a key part of the community as areas continued to recover from war.

Poplar locals shared that Call the Midwife shows how loving the residents were to the sisters and nurses, sharing that they used to ride their bikes in uniform.

Unlike the show, Nonnatus House was not condemned, but the nuns moved from the area to Birmingham in 1976 after the nursing job at Poplar was taken over by 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.

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