Draft:Grimethorpe Colliery

Grimethorpe Colliery was a coal mine situated within the village of Grimethorpe, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, England.

History

Grimethorpe Colliery operated from 1895 . It was one of the deepest and most productive mines in Britain due to the six-foot thick 'Barnsley Seam' of high-quality bituminous coal used for both 'coking' and 'steam' coal, with the deepest shaft reaching 926 yds.

The mine workers were part of the 1984–1985 United Kingdom miners' strike, where a large majority of Yorkshire miners voted to strike.

In May 1993 the Conservative Government closed the mine, making the workers redundant. The lack of other industry close by, and bad connections to other areas left Grimethorpe's ex-miners with little options for employment. In 1994, as a direct result of the closures, the European Union deemed Grimethorpe the poorest location in the country.

The Grimethorpe Colliery Band

The Grimethorpe Colliery Band is a brass band, based in Grimethorpe. It was formed in 1917, as a leisure activity for the workers at the colliery, by members of the nearby disbanded Cudworth Colliery Band.

The band won first place with 99 out of 100 on 17 October 1992 in the National Brass Band Championship at the Royal Albert Hall in London, just months before the mine was closed for good.

In media

The 1996 film Brassed Off was set 10 years after the strike in the era when numerous pits closed before the privatisation of British Coal. The film refers to the strike and some of the dialogue contrasts the resistance in 1984 with the resignation with which most miners responded to the pit closures of the early 1990s. It was set in the fictional town of Grimley, a thin disguise for the hard-hit ex-mining village of Grimethorpe, where some of it was filmed.