Yorkley is a village in west

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 ...

, 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 Lydney is a town and civil parish in Gloucestershire, England. It is on the west bank of the River Severn in the Forest of Dean District, and is 16 miles (25 km) southwest of Gloucester. The town has been bypassed by the A48 road since 1995 ...

, it has two pubs, a sub post office, few shops, a primary school and is home to Yorkley AFC. Yorkley was also home to Yorkley Star Cricket Club for 130 years until it was forced to close in October 2015 due to repeated digging of the Cut and Fry Green pitch by feral boar.

History

Cottages are recorded in both Yorkley and Yorkley Slade (formerly the Slade) in the 1780s.Forest of Dean: Settlement
Victoria County History The Nag's Head Inn, at Yorkley Slade, is recorded from 1788 and was enlarged around 1850. In the mid 19th century much rebuilding and new building took place at Yorkley, some of it by employees at the

Parkend Ironworks Parkend Ironworks, also known as Parkend Furnace, in the village of Parkend, in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, England, was a coke-fired furnace built in 1799. Most of the works were demolished between 1890 and 1908, but the engine house su ...

. The inn now known as the Bailey Inn, dates from around 1910 when it was known as the Royal Oak. From 1930 a large estate of council houses was formed on the north side of Yorkley Slade. Yorkley had a working men's institute in 1892.Forest of Dean: Social life
Victoria County History A new institute was built on Bailey Hill around 1910 and a recreation ground was laid out next to it in the early 1920s as the district's war memorial. Yorkley Onward band started in 1903 as an offshoot of the Pillowell band and its hall, built in 1913, has been used for village activities.

Mining was once a major source of employment in the area, and there was an opencast

coal mine Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

at Yorkley as recently as 1960.Forest of Dean: Industry
Victoria County History

Notable residents

*Poet F. W. Harvey lived in Yorkley at the time of his death. *Football manager Jacob Cole, notable for having the worst win percentage in North Gloucestershire football history.

References

Map sources

External links

The Villages – YorkleyYorkley Village websitephotos of Yorkley and surrounding area on geograph
{{authority control Forest of Dean Villages in Gloucestershire