Mining village

The villages were built on the coalfields of Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution where new coal mines were developed in isolated or unpopulated areas.

The 1939 film The Stars Look Down, based on the 1935 novel of the same name by A. J. Cronin, is set in the fictional pit village of Sleescale.

A fictional village in this region was the site of the film The Proud Valley, starring Paul Robeson.

Billy Elliot, set in a fictitious pit village during the miners' strike of 1984–85, was shot on location in Easington Colliery.

The depopulation of Fitzwilliam, West Yorkshire was the theme of a song by Chumbawamba and David Peace's novel Nineteen Seventy Four.