Page 270 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

The Story of the C.W.S.
already had taken shape there for a Northern home. This it was
first intended to build at Rothbury, toward the Cheviots, but the
idea was abandoned later in favour of the purchase of Gilsland Spa,
in the Pennines, on the Northumberland and Cumberland border.
A buUding fund was created, when the C.W.S. subscribed (March,
1901) one-half the sum required, the federation's contribution
(carrj'ing rights of representation with it) being £5,000. A North-
western movement followed, which resulted in the North-Western
Co-operative Convalescent Homes Association, composed of the
North-Western societies and the C.W.S. Here, again, the Wholesale
Society furnished one-half the necessary initial capital in a sum of
£8,000. The association established the present homes at Blackpool
and upon the Chevin, over Wharfedale at Otley. In the vnde
territory of the South and West no home was built. A fund for
procuring admissions to existing homes (to which the C.W.S. is an
annual subscriber) took the place of a centraHsed provision.
Hence Roden remams the most southerly co-operative con-
valescent home. Withm an hour's drive of an important railway
centre which itself is only seventy miles from Manchester or Liverpool
and forty from Birmuigham, and yet surrounded by a purely
agricultural area not devoid of natural and historical attractions (as
the Roden Guide issued by the C.W.S. bears witness), the Roden
home has admirably served its purpose. On the estate, when it
changed hands, there was no church, chapel, school, readmg-room,
shop, or pubUc-house ; but the meeting-room of the institute which
the C.W.S. built is now used for religious services on Sundays, while
the institute as a whole provides both reading-room and the social
attractions of the public -house at its best. The institute was
opened by Mr. Lander in 1900, the employees and their wives and
sweethearts, well over a hundred persons in aU, being entertained
to tea by the Society. A branch of the Shrewsbury Co-operative
Society has also been opened. Indoors the home has pleasures of its
own. ... In adcUtion to these various benefactions a donation
of £3,000 toward the endowment of the Crossley Sanatorium for
consumptives at Delamere, Cheshire, was granted hy the C.W.S.
Committee and approved by the Quarterly Meetings of September,
1902.
Fifty miles south of Roden and Shrewsburj^ by Ludlow and
Leominster, through rich and beautiful countr}'', one reaches the
tiny railway station of Moreton-on-the-Lug. The pretty, twisting
river that bears this ugly name runs into the Wj^e just below
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