Woolley Moor

Woolley Moor
Derbyshire
Woolley Moor.
Location
Grid reference:	SK371610
Location:	53°8’56"N, 1°27’4"W
Data
Post town:	Alfreton
Postcode:	DE55
Dialling code:	01246
Local Government
Council:	North East Derbyshire
Parliamentary constituency:	North East Derbyshire

Woolley Moor is a small, modern village in Derbyshire. It has a church, a public house (the White Horse) and a school. Almost all of the villagers work outside the village although there are two family run dairy farms creating employment for a handful of people.

History

The village was created in the 1950s on the destruction of another. River Amber valley was flooded in 1958 and completely submerged farmland, roads and part of the Ashover Light Railway. The Ogston Reservoir also destroyed most of the village of Woolley, including the Woolley House Hydro, the village store, the blacksmiths, the joiners, the laundry, the sheep-dip and Napoleons Home, the local public house.

The Woolley villagers were relocated in advance of their village's destruction into council houses built in another local hamlet, 'Badger Lane', which eventually became known as the village of Woolley on the Moor, and subsequently became the present village of Woolley Moor. However the name 'Wooley Moor' appears much earlier, in the 1891 census as the birthplace of several people living in Shirland, Stonebroom and Stretton. This suggests that a village of that name existed long before the flooding of the valley.

Over the years Woolley Moor has had a number of shops and a post office although these have been transformed into normal houses since the 1980s. There was also another public house named 'The New Napoleon' which closed for good after a period of uncertainty in the late 2000s.