Pillowell is a small English village in

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of Gl ...

, on the south-eastern edge of the

Forest of Dean The Forest of Dean is a geographical, historical and cultural region in the western part of the county of Gloucestershire, England. It forms a roughly triangular plateau bounded by the River Wye to the west and northwest, Herefordshire to the n ...

. Once a mining village, much of it now lies in a conservation area.

Description

Pillowell's coordinates are 51.75° N 02.55° W. It rose to be a mining village, directly east of

Whitecroft Whitecroft is a village in the Forest of Dean in west Gloucestershire, England. It is located in-between Bream and Yorkley. Whitecroft comes under the postal district of Lydney. The village has 2 pubs – The Miners Arms and The Royal Oak. ...

and directly west of

Yorkley Yorkley is a village in west Gloucestershire, England. The village includes the settlement of Yorkley Slade to the east. Yorkley is situated between the villages of Pillowell and Oldcroft. Near the town of Lydney, it has two pubs, a sub post ...

. Much of it lies in a conservation area. Its current population is about 250 in a housing stock of 101. The village has a place of worship: a late 19th-century

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's b ...

chapel. Pillowell Community Primary School, founded in the 19th century, briefly became known nationally in 1973, when its pupils under their music teacher Mrs Davies, sang "

I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" is a popular American song written in 1918, released in late 1919, becoming a number one hit for Ben Selvin's Novelty Orchestra. It has been revived and adapted over the years, serving as the anthem of Premier Leag ...

" as the signature tune for

Winifred Foley Winifred Mary Foley (born Winifred Mason; 25 July 1914 – 21 March 2009) was an English writer. She is known best for an autobiographical account of her childhood in the Forest of Dean: ''A Child in the Forest''. Forest life Winifred Foley ...

's ''A Child of the Forest'', when it was serialized on BBC ''Woman's Hour''. The poet F. W. Harvey (1888–1957) spent the last part of his life in the village.

History

According to the conservation-area documents, the earliest inhabitants may have been squatters on the edge of the royal Forest of Dean. In 1787, when the area still belonged to Newland parish, there were ten dwellings on Crown land, near the well that gave the settlement its name. Stronger growth came in the mid-19th century with the development of deep mining. A

Primitive Methodist The Primitive Methodist Church is a Methodist Christian denomination with the holiness movement. It began in England in the early 19th century, with the influence of American evangelist Lorenzo Dow (1777–1834). In the United States, the Primiti ...

chapel was built in 1835, when there were around 30 cottages. The building is now in residential use. A larger chapel opened on a new site in 1885. A large school for the area opened in 1877, with places for 400 children. Average attendance was 281 in 1889 and 501 in 1901. However, the roll in 1992 was down to 61. ''The Swan'' opened as a

beerhouse A beerhouse was a type of public house created in the United Kingdom by the 1830 Beerhouse Act, legally defined as a place "where beer is sold to be consumed ''on'' the premises". They were also known as 'small' or 'Tom and Jerry' shops Existing pu ...

in the Bream Road before 1891. A

Co-operative A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-control ...

store was open by the early 20th century. Coal mining throughout the Forest of Dean began to decline in the 1930s. The Princess Royal Colliery finally closed in 1962. A spiral brick chute and parts of a mineral railway bridge remain.Retrieved 19 October 2010.
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Pillowell Silver Band

The Pillowell

Silver Band In Britain, a brass band (known regionally as a silver band or colliery band) is a musical ensemble comprising a standardized range of brass and percussion instruments. The modern form of the brass band in the United Kingdom dates back to the 1 ...

is a competing band which performs at fetes, concerts and contests throughout the year. It has enjoyed many great conductors over the years, including T. J. Powell. The long-serving conductor, Clive Lewis, led it up from the fourth section of the national championships, and along with Alan Beddis and Fred Watkins, taught many of the children in the local village schools to play. In 2004 it was runner-up in the National 4th Section Championships of Great Britain, beaten by a single point for the title, and in 2015 it won the fourth section regional finals in Torquay under the bands current conductor, Ian Whitburn. In 2015 the band competed again at the national finals, finishing 8th in the country. In 2017 it gained promotion from the fourth section to the third. In 2020 the band pulled out of the Area Contest due to the Covid-19 pandemic and as a result is now competing in the fourth section.

References

External links

*Pillowell Silver Band sit
Retrieved 19 October 2010.
{{authority control Villages in Gloucestershire Forest of Dean