South Kirkby
South Kirkby is a town in the City of Wakefield in West Yorkshire, England which is governed locally by South Kirkby and Moorthorpe Town Council. The town forms half of the civil parish of South Kirkby and Moorthorpe. The parish has a population of 10,979.
Town council
The town retains its own town council and is represented on the district council by Wilf Benson, Michelle Collins and Steve Tulley.The South Kirkby and Moorthorpe Town Council motto is 'Friendship, Unity & Progress', and the two settlements have been twinned with Sprockhövel in the Ruhr Valley of Germany since 1981. The establishment of 'Sprockhövel International Friendship Circle' led to the same named organisation in South Kirkby & Moorthorpe. Since that time the Sprockhövel IFK and the South Kirkby & Moorthorpe IFC have organised an annual exchange visit.
History
The name Kirkby derives from the Old Norse kirkju-býr meaning 'village with a church'.The town was first mentioned 1086 in the Domesday Book, and South Kirkby retains the site of the original Angle settlement. The foundations and part of the walls of 'All Saints Church' in South Kirkby are from the period. For many centuries, they were both simply farming villages until the start of the Industrial Revolution. Hague Hall was located in South Kirkby before it was demolished in 1910 as a result of mining subsidence. In 1881, with the foundation of the South Kirkby Colliery coal mine, an increase in population caused the villages to be extended until at its largest the two settlements housed almost all of the 3,000 workers employed in the mine. In 1984, the miners' strike included the colliery's workforce but in vain. During the miner’s strike local man David Gareth Jones was killed whilst on picket at Ollerton Colliery. In 1988, South Kirkby Colliery along with many of the other coal mines in the immediate area closed and later cleared for redevelopment. These included South Kirkby-Ferrymoor ''Riddings Drift, Frickley Colliery , Kinsley Drift , and Grimethorpe Colliery''.