Ah, that makes perfect sense then... Chairman/Woman of the NAA would have had a fair bit of 'clout' in those days, I would imagine. Enough said.
Just a few other minor things I have remembered: Anytime I was required to go to the main house, it was mostly on the ground floor & main office; I rarely ventured to any of the upper floors, probably a few dozen times in total. I do remember in the main office they had small printed booklets, about half the size of an A4 sheet of paper, with a black & white photo of the outside view of the house on the cover, and various other smaller photos inside. This booklet was titled 'Elmleigh Residential Rest Home' (or something very similar), & I remember now, this is why it took me a while to realise the true purpose of the place - it mentioned nothing about adoption, or babies, basically the booklet made it look like some sort of 'holiday home'. They must have posted these to women, as there were boxes of them in the office & also in the main walk-in storage cupboard between the office & the main kitchen. I also now remember the head cook's name, it was a Mrs O'Reilly, if this rings any bells with you. Some days she used to bring out my daily meal to me, but most of the time I collected it from the back kitchen ground floor window. She was quite elderly then (c1971 ish) I remember, although maybe she just looked old to me (I was 19 then).
I also remember the very narrow, winding & steep backstairs, that went all the way from the main kitchen basement up to the top floor accommodation. I assume the house was home to a wealthy family with servants etc long before it became an adoption home.
I hope you can find as much information as you can, & that it is helpful to you. Does any place exist where you can check records, dates, names etc? Surely this can be done if Elmleigh was affiliated to NAA? Or will all of these records have been lost through the passage of time? Anyway, best wishes to you and hopefully some other people who stayed/worked there will read these postings & get in touch with you. I am sorry my memories are pretty sketchy & to be perfectly honest with you this was not a great time in my life, (nor one of my better jobs!) however in hindsight it opened my eyes to the world, in particular how the 'other half' live, & although I had no really bad experiences there (obviously I was not a young woman going there), it is not somewhere I remember too fondly. Best regards, James