Miners’ Convalescent Home, Queens Promenade, Blackpool

A CONVALESCENT HOME FOR LANCASHIRE AND CHESHIRE MINERS – A convalescent home for the miners of Lancashire and Cheshire is being built on the cliffs fronting the sea at the Bispham end of Blackpool. Operations were begun in September last, and another stage in the work was reached to day when corner stones were laid by Colonel Pilkington, president of the Lancashire and Cheshire Coal-owners’ Association and Mr Thomas Greenall M P, president of the Lancashire and Cheshire Miners’ Federation. … After Mr A J Hope of Messrs Bradshaw Gass and Hope, the architect, had presented trowels, and Sir Lindsay Parkinson, the contractor had presented mallets to Colonel Pilkington and Mr Greenall, the stones were laid. The building has now reached the second floor. … The funds for the building and equipment of the new home come out of the Lancashire and Cheshire Welfare Committee’s share of the welfare levy authorised by the Mining Industry Act of 1920. It was enacted that for a period of five years the sum of a penny a ton on the output of each mine should be payable by the coal owners of the country. The estimated cost of the home - which is expected to be open by next June – is about £105,000, and the equipment is estimated to cost some £20,000. The building and grounds will occupy about seven and a half acres, and the building has a frontage on King’s Drive with an uninterrupted view of the sea. It is set back some distance from the road, and the intervening space will be available as gardens and recreation grounds. A wide drive will lead from the main entrance gates to a spacious terrace stretching in front of the building and overlooking the grounds. Externally, the architectural treatment leading up to the dominating central water tower is in the Georgian manner, and of a domestic rather than institutional character. The building is faced with bright red Accrington brick, with Portland stone grey terra-cotta dressings. There is accommodation for 125 patients but dormitories only for 100 are now being provided. The public rooms comprise a reading room, smoke room billiard-room, a concert hall, with a kinema operating room, a recreation hall and a winter garden. One special feature of the building is the provision of open sheltered verandahs, which will run all along the main front. [Manchester Guardian  27 June 1925 page 14]

Opening        28 June 1927 - opening by Prince of Wales

Reference    Manchester Guardian 27 June 1925 page 14 with illustration
Reference    Builder 3 July 1925 Page 32 - Building works commenced
Reference    Manchester Guardian 6 April 1927 page 12 – photograph
Reference    Manchester Guardian 26 May 1927 page 12 – photograph
Reference    Manchester Guardian 29 June 1927 page 13 – photograph of opening
Reference    Manchester Guardian 23 June 1927 page8 – reduced price rail tickets