This site was first developed for non agricultural use in 1944 when the adjacent 'Birley East Colliery' became a 'Government Training Centre Pit' (Taylor 2001, 115). 2 of these centres lay in South Yorkshire, the other being at Askern Main Colliery. This part of the site housed the trainees in a 'Miners Hostel' (usually a collection of Nissen huts) "half a mile north east of the colliery alongside Beighton Road" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/22/a4083022.shtml accessed 22 June 2005). The 'Bevin Boys', drawn from conscripts at random, would normally stay at the training colliery for a period between 3 and 6 weeks before being dispatched to nearby working collieries (ibid). The hostel buildings (with their characteristic modular layout of Nissen huts) were still apparent on the 1956 OS 1:2500 sheet SK 4284) evidently reused as "Woodhouse Hospital", although by the 1:10000 sheet SK48SW published 1977 they had been demolished and replaced by the current hostel building. Invisible legibility of former miners hostel.