Pit village

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Pitfield Street sign, Pit Village, Beamish Museum Pitfield Street sign, Pit Village, Beamish Museum, 26 January 2014.jpg
Pitfield Street sign, Pit Village, Beamish Museum

A pit village, colliery village or mining village is a settlement built by colliery owners to house their workers. The villages were built on the coalfields of Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution where new coal mines were developed in isolated or unpopulated areas. Such settlements were developed by companies for the incoming workers.

Contents

Examples

The 1939 film The Stars Look Down , based on the 1935 novel of the same name by A. J. Cronin, is set in the fictional pit village of Sleescale. The film was shot partly on location at St Helens Siddick Colliery in Workington.

The novel How Green Was My Valley and the subsequent film adaptation of the same name were based in a fictional pit village in the South Wales Valleys. A fictional village in this region was the site of the film The Proud Valley , starring Paul Robeson.

Billy Elliot , set in a fictitious pit village during the miners' strike of 1984–85, was shot on location in Easington Colliery. [8]

Brassed Off was set in "Grimley", a thin veil for Grimethorpe. The depopulation of Fitzwilliam, West Yorkshire was the theme of a song by Chumbawamba and David Peace's novel Nineteen Seventy Four.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atherton, Greater Manchester</span> Town in Greater Manchester, England

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Creswell Model Village</span> Human settlement in England

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Creswell, Derbyshire</span> Village in Derbyshire, England

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Newstead, Nottinghamshire</span> Human settlement in England

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sharlston</span> Village and civil parish in West Yorkshire, England

Sharlston is a village and civil parish, situated 4 miles (6.4 km) east of Wakefield in West Yorkshire, England, and includes the settlements of Old Sharlston, Sharlston Common and New Sharlston. Its population at the 2001 census was 2,756, reducing to 2,663 at the 2011 Census. The village lies in the City of Wakefield unitary district.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Bolsover model village</span> Human settlement in England

New Bolsover model village is a village adjoining the town of Bolsover in Derbyshire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Howe Bridge</span> Human settlement in England

Howe Bridge is a suburb of Atherton, Greater Manchester, England. Historically within Lancashire, it is south west of Atherton town centre on the B5215, the old turnpike road from Bolton to Leigh. The settlement was built as a model pit village by the owners of Atherton Collieries.

Fletcher, Burrows and Company was a coal mining company that owned collieries and cotton mills in Atherton, Greater Manchester, England. Gibfield, Howe Bridge and Chanters collieries exploited the coal mines (seams) of the middle coal measures in the Manchester Coalfield. The Fletchers built company housing at Hindsford and a model village at Howe Bridge which included pithead baths and a social club for its workers. The company became part of Manchester Collieries in 1929. The collieries were nationalised in 1947 becoming part of the National Coal Board.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Howe Bridge Mines Rescue Station</span>

Howe Bridge Mines Rescue Station was the first mines rescue station on the Lancashire Coalfield opened in 1908 in Howe Bridge, Atherton, then in the historic county of Lancashire, England.

The Doe Lea branch is a mothballed railway line in Derbyshire, England. It connected the Derbyshire towns of Chesterfield, Staveley and Bolsover to the Nottinghamshire town of Mansfield. It also had a branch line to Creswell via the Derbyshire town of Clowne.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bentley Colliery</span> Former coal mine in South Yorkshire, England

Bentley Colliery was a coal mine in Bentley, near Doncaster in South Yorkshire, England, that operated between 1906 and 1993. In common with many other mines, it suffered disasters and accidents. The worst Bentley disaster was in 1931 when 45 miners were killed after a gas explosion. The site of the mine has been converted into a woodland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scheduled monuments in Bolsover</span>

This is a list of scheduled monuments in the district of Bolsover in the English county of Derbyshire.

References

Citations

  1. Sharlston Colliery Model Village, Heritage Gateway, retrieved 13 August 2015
  2. Howe Bridge, Atherton Conservation Area Appraisal (pdf), Wigan Council, p. 10, retrieved 13 August 2015
  3. Davies 2010, p. 97
  4. Historic England, "The Model Village (929805)", Research records (formerly PastScape), retrieved 13 August 2015
  5. Historic England, "New Bolsover Model Village (613327)", Research records (formerly PastScape), retrieved 13 August 2015
  6. Historic England, "Newstead Colliery Village (1038798)", Research records (formerly PastScape), retrieved 15 August 2015
  7. A study of Woodlands Model Colliery Village 1907-1909, Royal Institute of British Architects, retrieved 13 August 2015
  8. Byrnes, Sholto (8 May 2005). "Welcome to Easington... after Billy left town". The Independent. Retrieved 17 October 2022.

Bibliography