Pub Was Closed During Pay Day

October 1938

Sheffield Independent – Wednesday 12 October 1938

Pub Was Closed During Pay Day

The pits of which the Yorkshire Amalgamated Collieries hold the shares are directly governed by the Amalgamated Denaby Collieries. Ltd. whose share capital nominally valued at £1.4 million.

Huge Output

The pits are Cadeby, Denaby, Maltby, Dinnington Main and Rossington and their annual output is put at 3,500,000 tons. In employment value the largest is Maltby where there are 2,100 underground and 400 above.

Rossington follows with 2,000 underground and 400 on the surface. Denaby is next with 1,700 and 400 respectively; at Dinnington the figures are 1,000 and 350 and at Cadeby 1,000 and 350.

Rossington (872 yards) has the deepest shaft. Cadeby being  750 yards, Dinnington 856 yards, and Maltby 850.

I suppose Denaby and Cadeby are to be looked upon as the parent of this group and they owe not little of the position they have won in coalfield history to the late Mr. W. H. Chambers.

A grand collier—he wished for no better description—he was feared perhaps (although personally a lovable man) but undoubtedly respected by the colliers of his day as a man who knew his job and theirs as well.

Welfare Work

During his regime the company were by way of being pioneers in welfare work for tbeir employees: their social, recreational, educational and even religious needs were largely satisfied by the generositv of the colliery company of which he was the working head.

If memory is not at fault, the company in those days owned the Denaby Main Hotel and those who rail against the old school May pause to remember that the hotel was closed during the hours the men were receiving their pay and no “black face” was allowed to the served.

“W. H.” chose this means of ensuring that the pay-packets should first taken home to the wives.

Where so much has been done it comes a shock learn that pit head baths are among the things contemplated and not among those accomplished.