The Yateley Society wiki / HavenStory

The Haven, Yateley

The Haven, Yateley was a "mother and baby" home run by the Baptist Union for unmarried mothers to come and have their babies. It was opened in 1945, and closed in 1970. Its site is now occupied by a housing estate called Greenhaven, off Old Monteagle Lane, south of the eastern end of Monteagle Lane Yateley.

The Yateley Society gets more Local History enquiries about this institution than any other single aspect of Yateley's History.

2005 saw the 60th anniversary of the opening of the home, so The Yateley Society therefore made The Haven the subject of its annual Yateley Library Lecture, which was delivered as part of National Local History Month, May 2005:

Dr Richard Johnston of the Yateley Society told the story of The Haven, a home for unmarried mothers run by the Baptists from 1945 till 1970. Almost 1,800 babies were born there, many of whom have contacted the Society’s website for information about their birthplace. The story will be illustrated with photographs taken from a fundraising slideshow. But the story did not start in 1945. Dr Johnston recalled the building of Yateley’s last mansion house, then named Kerala, in the years before WW2 using photographs taken by an estate agent in 1935, and sent to us from New Zealand. He also showed how the houses in Greenhaven, the estate which replaced the house, relate to the siting of the original country house and its grounds.

The links below provide some of the information we have, but not the lecture itself. All these materials are copyright, and may only be used for personal study, and may not be published or reused in any form without permission of the copyright holders.