South Yorkshire Times – Saturday 29 August 1942

A View of The Exterior of The New Canteen

Wath Main Colliery canteen will be opened to-morrow (Saturday) by Mr. T. Shaw (chairman of the Company’s Board of Directors), Mr. W A Bates (organiser, Miners’ Welfare Commission) and Mr. J. A. Hall (president of the Y.M.A.),will also be present. Mr. M. C. Martyn (general manager) will preside.

The canteen, a neat brick building about 136 feet long is situated on the right side of Moor Road, a few yards from the entrance to the pit yard. The roofs of the lean-to rooms are of concrete with precast beams and the main hall is roofed with asbestos sheet on tubular asbestos principals: the floor is granolithic. The large dining hall has seating room for 240 men and standing room for 100. Tables are linoleum-covered concrete slabs with edges concealed in white wood, supported on brick pillars. Chairs will be of the fold-eat type.

The spacious kitchen can be aptly described as “a cook’s paradise.” Onentering it the first things which strike the eye are the enourmouse ovens (six solid fuel cooking ovens and fish friers, four ovens and three steam soup and vegetable boilers). One notices, too, the modern labour-saving devices such as the electric dish washer which cleans two dozen plates in twenty seconds. There are also four steam-heated hot cupboards and an electric griller.

Leading Into the kitchen are the superintendent’s room, staff room, food preparation room, dry store room, crockery store (containing over 5,400 pieces of crockery and a refrigerator whose hooks will be graced with sides of meat), vegetable store, and boiler-house. The whole building is lit by electricity for the installation of which Mr. F. L. Smith of Rotherham has been responsible.

Giving a 24 hour service, the canteen will be capable of providing 1,000 meals daily. A full dinner will consist of meat, two vegetables and bread, 10d.; sweet 2d and tea or coffee 1d. The colliery already has a snack bar in the colliery yard which has been running very successfully for some months.

The lay-out of the canteen has been planned by a Rotherham architect, Mr. C. A. Broadhead and the building erected by Mr. G. H. Smickersgill (Wath). Sub-contractors were Messrs. Light Bros., Sheffield (heating equipment), and Messrs. G. Hirst and Son, Swinton (plumbing). The cost of the canteen has been borne by the Miners’ Welfare Commission.

On Saturday the canteen opening will be combined with the Colliery Pensioners’ Treat. After the opening ceremony, pensioners will have the first meal in the canteen, this being provided by the Colliery Company and employees.