Woolley Colliery
| Woolley Colliery | |
 A row of terrace houses in Woolley Colliery |
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  Woolley Colliery |
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| OS grid reference | SE319132 |
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| Metropolitan borough | Barnsley |
| Metropolitan county | South Yorkshire |
| Region | Yorkshire and the Humber |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | BARNSLEY |
| Postcode district | S75 |
| Dialling code | 01226 |
| Police | South Yorkshire |
| Fire | South Yorkshire |
| Ambulance | Yorkshire |
| EU Parliament | Yorkshire and the Humber |
| UK Parliament | Barnsley Central |
Coordinates: 53°36′52″N 1°31′09″W / 53.61438°N 1.51928°W
Woolley Colliery is a village which lies on the border between the Barnsley and Wakefield districts in Yorkshire, England. The village itself is in South Yorkshire whilst the former colliery is situated in West Yorkshire. The NUM leader, Arthur Scargill, started work at the colliery in 1953 aged 14.
The village is known locally as Mucky Woolley, a tribute to its coal mining heritage and to distinguish it from the more affluent village of Woolley situated 2 miles away.
Coal mines were worked there as early as 1850, and at about that time the village was established when two rows of small terrace cottages were built to accommodate the miners. There are several natural coal seam outcrops on the hillside and so coal was probably mined in that area for many years prior, but only on a small scale until railway transport began. The pit grew to become one of the largest in West Yorkshire; in 1980, it employed 1514 men underground and 428 on the surface.
The main mine began as a pair of tunnels dug into the hillside in the Barnsley bed seam. As time went on, vertical shafts were sunk to reach the deeper seams. In the 1960s there were three shafts in the pit yard and a fourth, for extra ventilation, about a mile to the east. At that time around 17,000 tons of high quality coal were produced each week.
After the 1984-5 miners strike, the men from North Gawber colliery were also transferred to Woolley. The pit finally closed in 1987.
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