Denaby Main Colliery closed in 1968 after 101 years of producing coal.
The colliery site itself is now home to the Dearne Valley Leisure Centre and the only remaining colliery building now remaining is the pit baths.
The Denaby baths seem to date, going by the architecture, from the late 1930's and have an almost nautical theme, very similar to some of the modernist buildings of the time with the use of portholes - God knows what a 1930's Yorkshire mining village made of such a radical style!
This site is part-demolished and what remains is well and truly trashed , there's little evidence, other than the tiled walls, to suggest what it used to be - no lockers, no cubicles, no plumbing fittings.
One of many shower rooms
Through the round window...Dearne Valley Leisure Centre, a very different type of "baths"
The colliery site itself is now home to the Dearne Valley Leisure Centre and the only remaining colliery building now remaining is the pit baths.
By the end of the 19th century, pit-head baths were common in Belgium, France and Germany. In England most miners bathed at home. As pit-head baths became more common over the 20th century, so miners' housing changed, with an increasing amount of bathrooms situated upstairs. Who can remember the bath in the kitchen of many a terraced house !
Pit-head baths were only slowly introduced in Britain. Legislation in 1911 stopped short of requiring them to be provided, and by the time the coal industry was nationalised only around a third of pits had bathing facilities.
The Denaby baths seem to date, going by the architecture, from the late 1930's and have an almost nautical theme, very similar to some of the modernist buildings of the time with the use of portholes - God knows what a 1930's Yorkshire mining village made of such a radical style!
This site is part-demolished and what remains is well and truly trashed , there's little evidence, other than the tiled walls, to suggest what it used to be - no lockers, no cubicles, no plumbing fittings.
One of many shower rooms
Through the round window...Dearne Valley Leisure Centre, a very different type of "baths"