25/12/2025
Merry Christmas and Good Health for the New Year 2026
Rotherham Hotel
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Rotherham Hotel, a good old fashioned country hotel based in beautiful mountain region, on the pacif
Address
42 George Street
Rotherham
7379
Opening Hours
| Monday | 9am - 2am |
| Tuesday | 9am - 2am |
| Wednesday | 9am - 2am |
| Thursday | 9am - 2am |
| Friday | 9am - 2am |
| Saturday | 9am - 2am |
| Sunday | 9am - 2am |
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Rotherham Hotel 34 years in the making...
It was a hot January in 1986 when Keith picked his family up from Kaiapoi who had just returned from a trip down in Southland with Jack and Karyn Sutherland. Mum (Margaret) and I (Greg) were in the car that day, crying, not really knowing where we were going, we had never heard of Rotherham. After about an hour and 20 minutes we arrived, it was a one-horse town with a Shop and the Rotherham Hotel, which turned out to be ours after Mum and Dad had decided to purchase. I remember that day well, it was stinking hot with the all to familiar North Westerly wind blowing, whipping up dust from the nearby shingle road and river. Initially, we felt isolated, Rotherham was a small country village, a totally new life awaited us compared to living in the market garden at Halswell.
Our fate was set 3 years before in January 1983 (https://hwe.niwa.co.nz/event/January_1983_Canterbury_Tornado_and_Hail) when the Halswell tornado a horrific storm with Golf ball-sized hailstones, had ripped through the village, tearing house roofs off, decimating crops, and wiping our market garden out. I remember Dad standing outside watching as we run to hide in the wardrobe, the noise was horrific, you could see the funnel in the sky, as all the windows in the house smashed from the hail and force of the wind, it was truly terrifying. For Keith it was not the first weather event he had experienced, hail once again had damaged crops on an Orchard he once owned in Mapua / Lower Moutere.
Keith worked in Blenheim road for Hamilton jet, welding, whilst Mum was picking mushrooms in Templeton for Meadow mushrooms in the time post Tornado. The Christchurch town life did not appeal to Keith at all, so when the opportunity arose to move out into the Country, with the support of his family and the advise that Rotherham was a great community from his solicitor he jumped at the chance.
The Rotherham Hotel was quite run down, in need of maintenance and in those days was frequented mainly by shearing gangs, local spraying contractors, sheep farmers and sports teams. It was the late 80’s, the baby boomers kids were all in their teens, the villages had good populations and this created a strong community. We had local river raft races, go karts in Waiau, all villages had a cricket, netball, tennis and rugby teams. The clientele was colourful, to say the least, Keith & Margaret had to learn quickly the art of hospitality, handling various characters around the district, especially some of the local shearers who were fond of the drink, a good scrap and loved to party after a hard day of work. There were at times 3 or 4 Helicopters parked out the front, 4WD with wild game on the back, it was what I call the “Barry Crump” days, a good old fashioned kiwi bloke type of place, where you worked hard and played even harder. Margaret learned pretty quickly to develop a thick skin, initially, she would get quite upset working behind the bar, dealing with filthy mouthed patrons, in the end, she made a quite profitable business out of the “swearing box”, Harry Cockburn was probably the main contributor here! Once we got to know everyone, there was no better people or community to live in, and whilst the Hotel life was hard work at times, we made life long friends along the way.
