Talk:Woolley Colliery

Comments
I was born in Woolley Colliery 21 bluebell road. Went to school at the top of the field. This was a West riding county council school. ie- Wakefield I'm pretty sure that Wooley is in the Wakefield district - not Barnsley.

I think the pit was in Wakefield but Darton may be in Barnsley. 82.38.97.206 22:58, 2 February 2006 (UTC)mikeL

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~cmhrc/map80.htm This shows the location of the pit. It was just in the Wakefield district. I think this is the reason why Darton is especially included in the West Yorkshire Metro.

according to Epa101 '''" The pit was one of the largest in the entire country"  This is simply not true.. '''In output terms several South Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire pits consistently produced much more year after year and there were a few bigger ones elsewhere in the country. Because the seams were relatively thin the total length of coal faces was quite high, as was the manpower. Output per man was low. The pit was usually profitable because the coal was of high quality and it fetched a good price.

"In 1980, it employed 1514 men underground and 428 overground." When I worked there in the late 1950's there were probably more like 2500 men on books. None of them worked 'overground' but some worked on the surface....

....and there were some fine young ladies in the wages office. 82.38.97.206 20:41, 22 February 2006 (UTC)mikeL

http://www.jnadin1.50megs.com/custom4.html I was actually going in terms of how many men in employed. Here is the resource that I used; towards the end of the page, you get the figures for 1980 employment. It certainly seemed to be one of the biggest employers in British Coal and there were only a few in South Yorkshire that employed more. ~Epa101

Hello Epa please forgive my bluntness and, if you wish, add some waffle about big in manpower terms though not so big in output. I was out of touch at the time you mention but I guess Thoresby and Kellingly would have been doing 25000 tonnes or more in most weeks. .. Don't know why I go on like this the article is supposed to be about the village..

Someone ought to do a piece on Barnsley Bus Station in the 1950's. At 5am. it was as busy as Trafalgar Square

regards from ~ mikeL