Rhyl, North Wales, The Long Lost Derbyshire Miners’ Welfare Holiday Camp!

This looked a lovely place, Just like Rhyl once did until the Council Destroyed it. This great article came from Rhyl Life by Colin Jones see....

http://rhyl-life.blogspot.com/2010/01/derbyshire-miners.html

DERBYSHIRE MINERS'

In response to readers’ requests for pictures of Derbyshire Miners’ Welfare Holiday Centre, Marsh Road, here are a couple of postcards from 1960s. The paddling pool card was sent to a lady in Holbrooks, Coventry, saying that the senders were having a pleasant time with fair weather, plenty of food and good companions.

The colour photo shows a sign you would find today on a corner of Marsh Road and Chatsworth Road leading to an estate that Wales & West Housing Association built where Derbyshire Miners’ used to be. Down there in addition to Chatsworth Road are Thornton Close, Sudbury Close, Haddon Close and Buxton Court.

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THU 4th FEB 2010 UPDATE: Thanks to Andy Lindley of Ashby-de-la-Zouch for sending the following comments:
"I am originally from Derbyshire and used to holiday in Rhyl at the Miners' Camp in the early 1970s. I would have been around 7 or 8 and my brother two years younger; we went about three times. I remember eating in the big canteen and when a waitress dropped something everybody cheered. There always seemed to be pea soup for starters – not good for kids who don't like vegetables! The pool always seemed cold so I can't understand why all you locals kept climbing over the back fence to use it."

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MON 30th MAR 2015 UPDATE: Found for sale on Internet, the badge below indicates that at some point the camp was named The Derbyshire Holiday Centre . . .

. . . and in this postcard, which is unused and undated, the camp is called Derbyshire Miners' Holiday Centre.

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WED 17th JAN 2018 UPDATE: It's Derbyshire Miners' Holiday Centre again on these two cards postmarked 1975.

The Derbyshire Miners' Holiday Camp at Skegness, on the east coast of England, was opened in May 1939, to provide an annual holiday for Derbyshire coal miners and their families. It was seen as a pioneering venture and was part of a broad range of welfare benefits provided by a national Miners' Welfare Scheme established in the 1920s. 

The camp enabled miners and their families to have a week's holiday by the sea, many for the first time. 

Its creation owed much to the campaigning work of the trades union, the Derbyshire Miners' Association and, in particular, to the inspiration of Henry Hicken, one of the Derbyshire Miners' leaders. 

The Skegness camp finally closed in the late 1990s, coinciding with the demise of the British coal mining industry and the continued growth in the availability of affordable holidays in Spain and elsewhere. 

A similar, but smaller, camp for Derbyshire miners and their families was opened after the Second World War, in Rhyl, on the north coast of Wales From Wiki at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Derbyshire_Miners%27_Holiday_Camp#:~:text=It%20was%20seen%20as%20a,many%20for%20the%20first%20time.