It may have disappeared from our screens but you can still step into the world of Sunday night nostalgia and visit the location of the BBC’s Call the Midwife series.

It’s made us feel nostalgic for the 1950s, even when we may not have lived through them: the BBC’s Call the Midwife series has been phenomenally popular since it first dinged its bicycle bell on Sunday nights back in 2012.

With its mix of heartwarming tales, vintage sets and gentle pace, it’s been so successful, the Christmas special of 2016 was the most watched programme on Christmas Day, notching up 9.2 million viewers.

Although it is set in London, Kent can claim it as a home drama because Chatham’s Historic Dockyard has doubled as Poplar Dock in 1950s London since the beginning.

Its sixth series signed off from our screens earlier this month, with some 9m viewers tuning in to see a birth, a death and a marriage. And the corporation has commissioned three more series so you will be able to get your fix next year.

In the meantime, you can step into the midwives’ lives and find yourself right on the set.

The dockyard runs its Call the Midwife tours every year, on selected days from March to October, tickets for which get snapped up quickly. Visitors are shown round by their very own midwife, in 1950s costume, who will take them round the locations to see the familiar spaces used in filming.

The knowledgeable guides – who all keep abreast of the latest Call the Midwife goings-on – can also tell visitors which scenes have been filmed where, including from the most recent series.

Some of the 90-minute tours also include afternoon tea taken in the Commissioners’ House – another location used on screen.

The tours begin again this weekend, when there is a special Mother’s Day tour on Saturday, March 25 and Sunday, March 26, which includes afternoon tea, although both dates are sold out.

THE HISTORY

We were first transported back to the 1950s with the midwives in 2012, when the show premiered on BBC1.

It follows the lives of a group of midwives working in the poverty-stricken East End of London during the 1950s, and is based on the bestselling memoirs of Jennifer Worth.
Adapted by Heidi Thomas, its midwives work alongside the community of nuns who are nurses at Nonnatus House.

Over the years it has had Kent connections among its cast. Canterbury’s Pam Ferris starred as Sister Evangelina, who left the series last year when her non-nonsense character died, and Miranda Hart, whose cousin is Lullingstone Castle’s Tom Hart Dyke. She left the series in 2015. In 2014, the Maidstone Singers appeared in the drama, as part of the Poplar Choral Society.

Stars of the show include Strictly star Helen George and Jenny Agutter as Sister Julienne, as well as Victoria Yeates, who starred in The Crucible at Dartford’s Orchard Theatre earlier this month. The series, produced by Neal Street Productions, hasn’t shied away from controversial subjects, and has dealt with subjects including female genital mutilation (FGM) and Thalidomide.

THE DETAILS

Call the Midwife tours are held at Chatham’s Historic Dockyard from this weekend until Sunday, October 16.

The next tours which are not sold out will be held on Bank Holiday Monday, May 29 at 2pm, with a tour and afternoon tea. The following dates will be Sunday, June 11 at 11am and 2pm, and Sunday, June 25, also at 11am and 2pm.

Tickets cost £16 and £12.50 for children, and for a tour and afternoon tea costs £33 and £32 for children. To book, visit thedockyard.co.uk/whats-on or call 01634 823815.