Queen Mary's Maternity Home

During the First World War Queen Mary's Needlework Guild was established, with branches in many parts of the world, to make and distribute clothes and other items to Servicemen. At the conclusion of the War a considerable sum of money collected by the Guild was left unspent and Queen Mary decided to use these funds to endow a Maternity Home, for the benefit of wives and children of Servicemen. The Home opened in October 1919 in temporary premises at "Cedar Lawns", North End Road, Hampstead, a house provided by Lord Leverhulme. The foundation stone of the new building at Upper Heath, on a site again provided by Lord Leverhulme, was laid on 12th October 1921 and was designed to provide 16 beds. The new maternity home was occupied in July 1922. In August 1939 the Home was evacuated to Eynsham Hall, Oxfordshire, but moved again to Freeland House, Oxfordshire, in the Autumn of 1941. The Home returned to Hampstead in the winter of 1945-1946.

On 1st April 1946 the management of Queen Mary's Maternity Home was taken over by the London Hospital. On 1st February 1972 it was transferred to the Royal Free Hospital. With the closure of New End Hospital, Hampstead, in 1986 and its subsequent sale, funds became available for the development of Queen Mary House as a Care of the Elderly Unit, known as Queen Mary House, which opened under the management of the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust in 1991.