Month: July 2016

Vauxhall Motors Recreation Centre

Built just over 80 years ago, Vauxhall Motors Recreation Centre was known to countless thousands of workers at the Luton vehicle factory as ‘the Canteen’.
The imposing building with its ornamental gardens was demolished in 1990. It was so huge it could seat 10,000 staff at a time for their meal breaks.
In the early days, so the story goes, there were three half-hour sittings for midday dinner of meat and two veg with sizzling jam roly-poly to follow. Later there would be another three sittings for tea of sandwiches and cake.
During the Second World War the Vauxhall plant was attacked by German bombers in August 1940, killing 37 workers and wounding 40, but the canteen remained intact.
Various attempts were made to camouflage the buildings, but they remained a target throughout the war alongside the railway and on the flight path from the lake at Luton Hoo.

Bute Hospital

In the days before the NHS, hospitals had to find ways of supplementing their income to provide care for patients.
Fundraising Hospital Sundays, bequests and donations from wealthy patrons all swelled the coffers. and individual contributions in time given by nurses paid a valuable part.
Here nurses of the Bute Hospital – predecessor of the Luton & Dunstable Hospital – are accepting a cart-load of groceries and cash on Pound Day in September 1936 to boost the hospital kitchen stores.
Pound Day in Luton was begun in 1906 by Bute matron Miss Poulton, who encouraged the public to donate gifts weighing one pound to the hospital.
Some still-existing shop buildings can be seen on the opposite side of Dunstable Road behind the heads of the nurses on the cart.