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Going extra mile to serve mobile meals

Dave Appleton
29/ 2/2008

NOW in its 51st year, the meals on wheels service in Rochdale is still going strong, testimony to the hard working members of the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service (WRVS).

Every day the service, which is subsidised by Rochdale Council, prepares and sends out 300 freshly-cooked, nutritional meals, delivered by volunteers, either direct to people’s homes or to local luncheon clubs.

For many people living on their own it’s a lifeline and its role has not changed much since it all began nationally in 1947 as Britain recovered from war.

In 1958, Observer reporter Alan Fitzsimmons, who later went on to become editor of our sister paper, the Heywood Advertiser, joined the volunteers on the day Rochdale’s meals on wheels service began operating.

In those days every Tuesday and Thursday lunchtimes a WVS van (it did not have the royal tag in its title then) was loaded up with meals – on the Tuesday the meal was roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, vegetables and a sweet – and off it went on its welcome trip round the town calling on old and disabled members of the community who were living alone.

People needing the service were recommended by the District Nursing Association, the Health Department and the Welfare Department and then a representative of the WVS called on them explaining the meals on wheels scheme.

The van in which the meals were carried cost £500, at that time a costly figure, and of course it had to be maintained.

That was where the WVS sometimes ran into trouble.

It was not allowed to raise money itself and the whole cost of putting the meals on wheels service into operation was carried out by local organisations, industries and members of the public through special fund-raising functions.

The meals then were prepared in the canteen of the Fieldhouse Mill of John Bright and Brothers Ltd and were carried in containers given to the WVS by youth clubs in the town.

The meals were subsidised by a grant from the Welfare Committee with the recipients paying the nominal sum of one shilling.

A 78-year-old woman in the Toad Lane area had her little table set and was ready for the meal to arrive when our reporter called in to see her.

When the meal arrived a few minutes later she was delighted, saying it had been a long time since she had sat down to ‘such a spread’ and afterwards she found it had done her so much good that even she even managed to do far more housework than on a normal day!