West Ham ambulance station wasn't always so, although the land has been in the hands of the medical professions since 1889 when Ms Katherine Twining bought the site and opened it up as as St Mary's District Nurses' Home.

There was a period of expansion from 1898 to 1904 where the site became an maternity training hospital, there were 12 in-patient beds, which is where the picture comes from.

There was then a number of changes, with the nurses home moving, and the building being damaged by bombs during World War II. During the Second World War, the In-patient Department was evacuated to Suntrap, High Beech, Loughton, Essex. During the same period the Ministry of Health Emergency Maternity Hospital at East Haddon Hall, Northampton was staffed by Plaistow Maternity Hospital.

Then, in 1976 the site was closed and the ambulance service moved in. Now we have the area's fitters, and a small but nice ambulance station. Later on in the year management will be moving into a portacabin on the site while the offices in Newham station are refurbished.

In an amusing turn of fate, one of the staff who works at the station was born there while it was a maternity hospital - we keep joking that one night-shift we'll find him dead in a messroom chair.