THERE was always something magical about Bramley Meade.

New mums spent 10 days or so in style in one of the grandest houses in the Ribble Valley.

“It was like being in wonderland,” a lass who lived close by in Whalley told me.

Yes, 10 days. Bit different to now when, I’m told, it’s a bit more in-and-out at local “birthing centres”.

Bramley Meade, Bull Hill maternity home (Darwen) and Accrington Victoria Hospital’s maternity department, operated as “cottage hospitals” in the years after the war. They were all popular, but Bramley Meade was renowned for its grandeur.

Bygones recently told of the very popular Bull Hill facility closing in early 1988; the other two followed soon afterwards. There were campaigns to save all three but they were to no avail. The local health authority wanted money to staff a new maternity ward being built at Blackburn.

Bramley Meade was built in 1882 for textile manufacturer Richard Thompson in three acres off Wiswell Road, Whalley. He owned textile mills in Padiham, Great Harwood and Blackburn.

It was bought after the last war by Lancashire County Council and three years later, in 1949, it reopened as an elegant maternity home – at about the same time Bull Hill opened a few miles away.

Sheena Byrom is one of several midwives who have worked in both Bramley Meade and Bull Hill. She began her NHS career in 1974, as a student nurse in Blackburn, qualifying in 1977 before training as a midwife in Burnley and, in 2008, she became East Lancs Hospitals’ head of midwifery.

She took early retirement to study for a PhD.

She said: “I have had an amazing career. When I first put on my nurse’s uniform all those years ago, with my starched apron and cap, I felt proud to be working for the NHS.

“I have never stopped being proud: of being a nurse, of being a midwife and of working for East Lancashire hospitals which have always had the very best of staff.”

Dr Byrom has become a leading expert on childbirth and has written and lectured extensively.

Bramley Meade closed in the early 1990s and it became a private residence.

Property developer John Ashworth, head of Hurstwood Developments, bought it for £500,000 and spent a considerable sum renovating it. The hall soon boasted a heated swimming pool, games room, gymnasium and recording studio, as well as eight bedrooms and several reception rooms.

Add a CCTV security system, nine-car garage, conservatory, tennis court, mezzanine gallery and extensive gardens, – complete with Roman well – and it could easily lay claim to be the finest private house in East Lancashire.

It went on the market for £2.5million in 2002 and was soon snapped up.

It went back on the market in 2018 when Whalley estate agent John Atherton who was handling the sale said: “It’s a unique property and there is very little like it for sale in the Ribble Valley. It has attracted a great deal of quality interest internationally, as well as from the local area.”