This is one of a large collection of films from the Rowntree Archive that YFA has recently been able to restore and digitise with the aid of Nestlé funding.  The collection mainly consists of adverts, many dating from the 1950s onwards, covering just about every product that Rowntree has produced over this period, as well as of the Rowntree family in the 1930s.  The filmmakers, Debenham & Co. of Beverley, made lots of films covering East and North Yorkshire, many of which are now with the...

This is one of a large collection of films from the Rowntree Archive that YFA has recently been able to restore and digitise with the aid of Nestlé funding.  The collection mainly consists of adverts, many dating from the 1950s onwards, covering just about every product that Rowntree has produced over this period, as well as of the Rowntree family in the 1930s.  The filmmakers, Debenham & Co. of Beverley, made lots of films covering East and North Yorkshire, many of which are now with the YFA –¬ see the Contexts for King George and Queen Visit Hull (1941).  Coupled with this film is one on the Rowntree's Sports Day from around the same time, 1947.  For more on the advertising films see the Contexts for Mr York of York, Yorks (1929) and Tokens (1962-63).  

Rowntree’s were pioneers in providing welfare for their workforce: introducing an invalidity fund in 1920, an unemployment scheme in 1921 and profit sharing in 1923 (although not extended to all employees until 1975).  They also had their own doctor and dentist – see also the Contexts for Rowntree’s Sports Day and for Seebohm Rowntree Wife and Friends (1935).  As part of this the company had established a Military and National Service Allowances Scheme, to which they set aside £50,000 in 1939. However, this remained unused, and in 1945 the Directors and the Profit Sharing Committee devoted £30,000 of the sum to a community purpose.  The following year a sub-committee produced a report which suggested providing a rest home for employees.  This led to them buying Dunollie on Filey Road in Scarborough at a cost of £18,000, leaving the remainder for running costs.  One of the descriptions of papers in the Rowntree Archive, held with the Borthwick Institute, includes a “schedule of claim for reinstatement of property to its original condition before being handed over to H M Government, 1946.” (Burg, and online)  It isn’t clear what this refers to, but clearly money was spent on the property in refurbishment before it opened in 1947.

By this time the former Marketing Director George Harris – responsible for launching many famous brands, like KitKat, Black Magic and Aero – had taken over as Chairman of the company after Benjamin Rowntree retired in 1941.  It may well be his wife giving the speech in the film, as Harris was seriously ill in this year.   Fitzgerald claims that he became “more reclusive, taciturn and morose”, and eventually resigned in 1952 (Fitzgerald, p 402).   In his entry for George Harris for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography  Fitzgerald states that: “Unlike the previous chairmen, Joseph and Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree, he was uninterested in personnel issues, and . . his overriding concern [was] with marketing and product innovation.”  Presumably the structures for employee welfare were already well in place, so that Harris’s relative disinterest in this didn’t prevent the implementation of welfare policies.

Dunollie certainly appears to be an idyllic place: where one can carve in the morning, read in the afternoon, play billiards in the evening, and cards after dinner.

An employee rest home in the post-war period wasn’t such an unusual phenomena as it is today, when they hardly exist at all – John Lewis, an exception in many ways in relation to its employees, or ‘partners’, has five holiday centres, but alas, it seems, no rest home.   Another example of a company also with a fairly progressive employee welfare policy from around this time was the manufacturers Newton Chambers – see  Thorncliffe- a Story of Enterprise in Its Seventh Generation (1953).  But in more recent years, increasingly workers have to look outside their employers for welfare provision.  The law only covers welfare in the workplace.

In fact the very idea of a rest home seems to have disappeared.  There are care homes and nursing homes, but these are quite different.  The nearest equivalent would be a nursing home, but these have qualified nursing staff on duty 24 hours a day to support needs that are too complex to be met within normal residential homes.  What are now called ‘rest homes’ are really care homes, mainly for the elderly (unless they are for horses!). The Dunollie Rest House doesn’t seem to go as far with its provisions as a nursing home, only providing a place to recuperate after illness – although it isn’t clear exactly what medical provision it had.  This kind of ‘rest’ is now much more privatised at home – potentially leading to greater burdens on the family – rather than being a social function.  It seems that there was a blip in the mid-twentieth century when welfare was more socialised, before returning to a neo-Victorian framework – will the ‘social entrepreneurs’ of the Big Society bring us any rest homes?

Dunollie was probably closed as an employee rest home in the 1990s and sold on to the Murdoch family, who subsequently sold it to European Care Homes in 2000.  It is now operating as a Nursing Home providing residential care, nursing care, palliative care, physical disability and respite care.

References

Judith Burg, A guide to the Rowntree and Mackintosh Company archives, 1862-1969, Borthwick Institute Publications, York University, 1997.
Robert Fitzgerald, Rowntree and the Marketing Revolution 1862-1969, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Elizabeth Jackson, ‘Joseph Rowntree (1801), Citizen of York’, York Historian, 23:2003
Joe Murphy, The History of Rowntree’s in Old Photographs, York Publishing Services, 2007.
Joseph Melling, ‘Welfare Capitalism and the Origins of Welfare States: British Industry, Workplace Welfare and Social Reform, C. 1870-1914’, Social History, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Oct., 1992).
CocoaReworks
This has also produced a booklet with the same information, Memories of Rowntrees
Emma Robertson, Working at Rowntrees in York, BBC Legacies
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 
Dunollie Care Home
Jon Henley, Is John Lewis the best company in Britain to work for?, The Guardian