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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 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.

The Mitcheldean Road and Forest of Dean Junction Railway was an independent railway company incorporated in 1871, to provide a northerly outlet for iron ore and coal products from the Cinderford and Whimsey area in the Forest of Dean, to the Hereford, Ross and Gloucester Railway line; mineral traffic to industrial centres in South Wales and the Midlands was foreseen. The company ran out of money during construction, and the Great Western Railway purchased it and completed the line about 1882. By then the intended mineral flows were being adequately handled on other routes, and the GWR did not open the line to traffic, although in 1885 a short length at the southern end was opened to connect mineral workings. The line remained dormant until in 1907 the Great Western Railway introduced a service of railmotor passenger trains, opening several low-cost stopping places on the line as far north as Drybrook Halt. The service was successful at first but declined later, closing in 1930. Ammunition was stored in the disused tunnel on the line during World War II, but later use was confined to a bitumen plant near Whimsey, and the line closed completely in 1967.

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 north, the River Severn to the south, and the City of Gloucester to the east. The area is characterised by more than 110 square kilometres (42 sq mi) of mixed woodland, one of the surviving ancient woodlands in England. A large area was reserved for royal hunting before 1066, and remained as the second largest crown forest in England, after the New Forest. Although the name is used loosely to refer to the part of Gloucestershire between the Severn and Wye, the Forest of Dean proper has covered a much smaller area since the Middle Ages. In 1327, it was defined to cover only the royal demesne and parts of parishes within the hundred of St Briavels, and after 1668 comprised the royal demesne only. The Forest proper is within the civil parishes of West Dean, Lydbrook, Cinderford, Ruspidge, and Drybrook, together with a strip of land in the parish of English Bicknor.Traditionally the main sources of work have been forestry – including charcoal production – iron working and coal mining. Archaeological studies have dated the earliest use of coal to Roman times for domestic heating and industrial processes such as the preparation of iron ore.The area gives its name to the local government district, Forest of Dean, and a parliamentary constituency, both of which cover wider areas than the historic Forest. The administrative centre of the local authority is Coleford, one of the main towns in the historic Forest area, together with Cinderford and Lydney.

Cantref Coch (Welsh pronunciation: [ˈkantrɛ(v) koːχ] transl. The Red Cantref) was a cantref associated with the kingdoms of Ergyng, Gwent and the later Kingdom of Glamorgan. Its area is defined as the land between the River Severn and the River Wye, with the Severn Sea as its southern border although its northern border is less certain. Cantref Coch is one of the few medieval cantrefi named by Welsh writers that is not within the modern nation of Wales.

The Forest of Dean Coalfield, underlying the Forest of Dean, in west Gloucestershire, is one of the smaller coalfields in the British Isles, although intensive mining during the 19th and 20th centuries has had enormous influence on the landscape, history, culture, and economy of the area. For hundreds of years, mining in the Forest of Dean Coalfield has been regulated through a system of freemining, in which individuals who qualify are granted leases to mine specified areas, known as gales. The Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946 exempted the Forest of Dean because of its unique form of ownership and history, allowing the unique privilege to continue intact. The last of the big gales closed in 1965 and today only a few small collieries are still operating.

Oakenhill Railway Cutting (grid reference SO630069) is a 0.81-hectare (2.0-acre) geological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Gloucestershire, notified in 1985.The site is listed in the 'Forest of Dean Local Plan Review' as a Key Wildlife Site (KWS).

Forest of Dean is a local government district in west Gloucestershire, England, named after the Forest of Dean. Its council is based in Coleford. Other towns and villages in the district include Blakeney, Cinderford, Drybrook, English Bicknor, Huntley, Littledean, Longhope, Lydbrook, Lydney, Mitcheldean, Newnham and Newent.

East Dean is a hamlet and former civil parish, now in the parish of Mitcheldean, in the Forest of Dean district, in the county of Gloucestershire, England. East Dean became a township in 1844 and abolished as a civil parish on 1 April 1953.The Forest of Dean was an extra-parochial area in the St Briavels hundred of Gloucestershire. It was without the usual parish structure until the West Dean and East Dean townships were formed in 1844. For poor relief, East Dean was grouped into the Westbury-on-Severn Poor Law Union and was included in the Westbury-on-Severn rural sanitary district. Following the Local Government Act 1894, East Dean became a civil parish in the East Dean and United Parishes Rural District, which was renamed East Dean Rural District in 1935. The population of the parish was as follows: It occupied an area of 12,487 acres (50.53 km2) in 1881 and 12,860 acres (52.0 km2) in 1951.In 1935 a new civil parish of Lydbrook was created from part of its area and transferred to West Dean Rural District. The civil parish was abolished in 1953 and split to create the new parishes of Cinderford, Drybrook and Ruspidge. Part of the former area was transferred to the existing parishes of Awre, Littledean and Mitcheldean. The area of the former parish is now within the Forest of Dean district.

Eastern United Colliery was a drift mine in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, England served by the Great Western Railway's Forest of Dean Branch. The colliery was one of the seven areas of deep gales - founded after the Dean Forest (Mines) Act in 1904. The colliery exploited six seams containing 41,000,000 long tons (41,700,000 t) of coal which could give a working life of around 200 years (at an extraction rate of 200,000 long tons (203,000 t) per annum. The principal coal seam was the Coleford High Delf, a steam coal much in demand and said to be up to 5 ft 0 in (1.524 m) thick. Demand led to discussions with the Great Western Railway over the provision of a link to its network.

Pillowell is a small English village in Gloucestershire, on the south-eastern edge of the Forest of Dean. Once a mining village, much of it now lies in a conservation area.

Staple Edge Halt railway station is a disused railway station opened by the Great Western Railway (GWR) on the former Bullo Pill Railway, later known as the GWR Forest of Dean Branch.

Oldcroft is a hamlet in Gloucestershire, England. The village of Yorkley is to the northwest, and the hamlet of Viney Hill is to the northeast.