Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish — reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!

Last week, I reviewed the film version of A Monster Calls. Tina shared one of her favorite Christmas films, Love Actually, along with a recipe for Portuguese fish stew. Sim had a guest, Ginger Henny on her blog to write a review of Mary Queen of Scots. Jean reviewed the book The Shepherd’s Castle by George MacDonald.

PBS Passport is a benefit of joining your local PBS station. If you missed the holiday special of Call the Midwife on Christmas Day, like I did, you can see it using PBS Passport.

I wrote a whole itinerary for a day trip to the Chatham Historic Dockyard because that’s where many of the exterior scenes are filmed. We get a new location in the holiday special.

A scene filmed in Leith Hill Place, standing in for the Mother House of the sisters who run Nonnatus House in Poplar.

In the 2018 holiday special, we follow some of the sisters to the Mother House, for the first time in the series. We’ve often seen sisters leave Nonnatus House to go to the Mother House, but we’ve never been along for the ride (in a blue van driven by Fred). The Mother House was played by Leith Hill Place in Surrey, previously a home to the Wedgewood family of pottery fame. The operations manager of Leith Hill Place, a National Trust site, reports that the “location fee will go towards funding repairs to the roof, securing the future of this historic building for generations to come.”

Trixie is back! She was gone during much of the previous season, recovering from alcoholism in a warm place near the Mediterranean. Trixie is played by Helen George who had a baby, daughter Wren Ivy, during her absence from the show. According to Wikipedia, Helen George started dating the baby’s father John Ashton, who plays Reverend Tom Hereward on the show, during the South Africa trip to film the 2016 Christmas special.

Like most episodes of Call the Midwife, this one tackles an issue from several angles. In this case, it’s adoption.

Did you see the holiday special? What did you think?