From the exact shade of the orange juice to the colour of the lino, every last detail of a new 1960s replica of a Wolverhampton infant centre has been researched thoroughly by staff at the Black Country Living Museum (BCLM).
The Lea Road Infant Welfare Centre, open to the public from Monday, will commemorate 75 years of the NHS and the 75th anniversary of the Empire Windrush arriving in the UK, through stories and characters from the period.
“Particularly in the 60s, there was a real labour shortage and it was people from the Caribbean and the Windrush generations that came over and brought their skills and have looked after us for generations,” said Carol King, the director of programmes at BCLM. “So we felt it was really important to highlight that contribution.”
Visitors to the infant centre will be able to take part in 1960s-style mothercraft lessons, get parenting advice from midwives and health visitors, and learn about what it was like to work in the NHS in that period.
In the dispensary, shelves show tins of powdered milk, bottles of orange juice and rosehip syrup, all of which were prescribed for babies at the time.
The actual Lea Road infant centre still stands in Wolverhampton today, but recreating the interior as it would have been in 1961 required meticulous research.
“We spoke to people who worked there, people who remembered going to it as a child – about the floors, the smells, the noises,” said King. “One common memory was people coming with their tokens to get their orange juice, so we wanted to get the colour and smell and taste just right.”
To mark the official unveiling, 75 Black Country babies were invited along, all of whom will be given free access to the museum until the age of 16.
“It’s an absolutely beautiful replica,” said James Kelly, visiting with his wife, Amy, and their three-month-old twins, Alexander and Freya. “They’ve done it so well it genuinely feels like walking back in time. And we hope the kids grow up getting to learn more about it and how important it was.”
All the characters in the centre are based on real people, researched through oral histories from those who knew them.
Temara Simpson is embodying the character of the midwife Cicilyn Synclair, who trained as a nurse in Jamaica before travelling to the UK as part of the Windrush generation.
“You can’t tell the story of the history of the NHS without Windrush,” said Simpson. “It’s such an important story, and I feel as if sometimes it can be dismissed. So I feel really proud to be doing this and I think it’s really powerful.”
