Fitzwilliam is a small village on the edge of West Yorkshire, England, in the City of Wakefield district.

In 1905, a bitter industrial dispute led to all the miners being expelled from their homes, which were owned by the Fitzwilliam family; this became known as the "Kinsley eviction".

In response, Fitzwilliam was included in the Hemsworth Coalfield regeneration area and has received special funding to aid its recovery.

[7] The economy improved much in the first decade of the 21st century and unemployment in the Hemsworth seat fell to 3% in 2007,[8] although there are no statistics specifically for Fitzwilliam.

The village also plays a large role in the crime novel Nineteen Seventy Four, in which it is introduced in a list of "hard towns for hard men" and then later referred to as "a dirty brown mining town" and "where the night comes early and nowt [nothing] feels right, where the kids kill cats and the men kill kids".