The young patients at Lissue House in Lisburn are treated to the nurses singing carols. Some little ones munch on sweets they got as gifts. The nurses sing 'Oh Come All Ye Faithful', 'Once in Royal David's City' and 'Hymn for Christmas Day' as they walk around the wards carrying laterns and bringing some of the children with them.

Lissue House in Lisburn was originally a private home, and in planning for the

evacuation of children in the Second World War, Colonel and Mrs Lindsay

offered the house to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children as a hospital for

the treatment and convalescence of child patients. In 1945, after the War, the hospital was closed, but the Lindsays then donated the house to the newly created Northern Ireland Hospitals Authority. After a period in which the buildings were modified it was reopened in 1949 as a paediatric hospital, addressing children’s health problems current at that time, such as tuberculosis, lobar pneumonia, rheumatic fever and worm infestation. By 1959 Lissue was a busy branch of the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children, treating surgical and medical patients and able to house up to seventy patients. It fulfilled this role for just over two decades. 

An Ulster Television Production

• Broadcasting Authority Ireland