INSPIRED by the Memories series earlier this year, dozens of Hardwick Hall babies gathered recently in the building where they drew their first breath and screamed their first scream.

And their mothers remembered how there was no lift up to the delivery room and so when they’d given birth, they had to be carried down the stairs in the arms of the odd job man, back to the ward.

Hardwick Hall, on the outskirts of Sedgefield, was built in the second half of the 18th Century by John Burdon. It remained in private hands until the English gentry ran out of money after the First World War – as Downton Abbey has shown – and it fell into local authority hands. It became a rehabilitation centre for young men and then was focussed to help the Second World War effort, as a Bevan Boys hostel and an Army training camp.

At the start of the war, the Sedgefield area received evacuees from Tyneside, and part of the hall was converted into a maternity hospital for those evacuees who were in the family way. In our series, we concluded that the first baby to be born at Hardwick arrived on January 8, 1940 – Barbara Cummings (nee Taylor), who still lives in Sedgefield – but Saturday’s gathering heard of Kenneth Morton, now in Vancouver in Canada, who was born there in November 1939.

The gathering was organised by Norma Neal and the Sedgefield Local History Society, and about 65 people with childbirth connections attended. They were allowed to see the first floor delivery room, now the Boardroom.

“There was no lift, so mothers were carried back down to the ward by odd job man Billy Holmes,” says Norma. “Nurses would carry down four babies at a time, two snuggled into each arm.”

All of this was before the creation of the National Health Service when the parents had to pay to have a baby. Memories 290 told how in 1950, it cost £13 2s 6d per week to give birth in the Argyll Nursing Home in Darlington, where the usual stay was two weeks.

The Argyll was obviously expensive, because Terry Wanless brought along the receipt from his birth in 1941 which showed that his father had to pay £5 14s 6d for his mother’s fortnight in Hardwick.

Today’s front cover is another gem brought into Saturday’s gathering. It shows the nurses outside Hardwick Hall with Matron Duffy in the middle.

At the age of 65, Matron Duffy married Hardwick Hall’s head gardener, George Hutchinson. Her second-in-command, Sister Carter, also found love at the hospital for she married the odd job man, Mr Holmes.

The last baby to be born at Hardwick is believed to have been Richard Valks, who now lives in Middleton St George, who arrived on May 19, 1968. The hall was then converted into a hotel and it moved onto specialise in another milestone of human life: weddings.

The first reception was held there on October 16, 1970, when Sheila and Neville Marshall were married – Sheila is the sister of Barbara, the first Hardwick baby, and now her grandson, Sam, works at the hotel.

If you have any Hardwick Hall stories, either let Memories know or get in touch with the Sedgefield society on 01740-622302.