Pit village
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A pit village, colliery village or mining village is settlement built by colliery owners to house their workers. The villages were built on the coalfields of Britain during the Industrial Revolution where new coal mines in isolated or unpopulated areas needed accommodation for the incoming workers.
Examples
- New Sharlston Colliery Village, Yorkshire (1864)[1]
- Howe Bridge, Atherton, Lancashire (1873–79)[2]
- Gin Pit village, Tyldesley, Lancashire (1874)[3]
- Creswell Model Village, Derbyshire (1895)[4]
- New Bolsover model village, Derbyshire (1896)[5]
- Newstead Colliery Village[6]
- Woodlands, Yorkshire (1905)[7]
In popular culture
The 1939 film The Stars Look Down, based on the 1935 novel by A. J. Cronin is set in the fictitious pit village of Sleescale. The film was partly shot on location at St Helens Siddick Colliery in Workington.
How Green Was My Valley and the subsequent film were based in a fictional pit village in the South Wales Valleys, as was The Proud Valley starring Paul Robeson.
Billy Elliot, set in a fictitious pit village during the miners' strike of 1984-1985 was shot on location in Easington Colliery.
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.
References
Citations
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Bibliography
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- ↑ Davies 2010, p. 97
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