The village grew first around the hilltop on the Barnsley to Pontefract road where a small hollow and the sites of several wells provided a good building area.

It was first spelt as 'Brierley' in some documents relating to the leasing of Brierley Manor by descendants of the Harryngton family, from Queen Elizabeth I in 1572.

[4] The early field boundaries can be recognised on the Ordnance Survey Map[5] by the irregular way in which they ring the village and by the winding outline of their hedges due to the ploughing methods of the time.

Its manor house was surrounded by a high, stone wall and a moat in a dwindled demesne in latter years of 5 acres (2.0 ha).

The building was mainly of local sandstone and many of the stones remain in the soil among which fragments of 14th and 15th century pottery have been found.