History
The Chatterley Whitfield Pit Head Baths were constructed between 1936 and 1937 at a cost of £36,000, marking a significant improvement in the welfare facilities available to miners at the colliery. Before their construction, there were no washing facilities at Chatterley Whitfield, forcing miners to return home in their dirty, coal-covered clothes. The baths, which opened in January 1938, were the second-largest in the country at the time, accommodating over 3,000 men and described as “undoubtedly the finest of their kind in the country.”
The design of the baths featured three distinct but interconnected zones on the first floor: a clean locker area for storing miners’ home clothes, a dirty locker area for pit clothes, and a shower area. The locker areas contained a total of 3,817 lockers, many of which still survive today. The ground floor housed offices, laboratories, a canteen, and a medical centre. A three-storey tower at the west end of the baths functioned as a calorifier and plenum chamber, integral to the heating and ventilation systems.
