Gabbie, a hook on the end of a rope or chain. (Scot.).Gablock, - see Ringer and Chain.
Gad or Moil, an iron wedge used for breaking down coal.
Gagging, a small embankment or heap of slack or rubbish made at the entrance to a heading as a means of fencing it off. (S.Staffs.).
Gain, a transverse, channel or cutting made in the sides of a roadway for the insertion of a dam or permanent stopping to prevent any gas escaping or air entering and to retain the dam in a firm position. (S.Staffs.).
Gait, a journey or a trip. Sometimes used for the distance a man travelled along the waggonway (N.East).
Gale, a royalty, Forest of Dean.
Galee, the owner of a gale. (F.of D.).
Gallery, a drift or a level or any underground roadway.
Galliard or Calliard, a compact sandstone with splintery fracture. - see Cank; or another name for ganister, (Yorks.).
Galliard balls, large ironstone concretions in sandstone, (Yorks.).
Gallowa, horse or pit pony. (N.East).
Gallows timber, a crown-tree with a prop placed under each end, (N.East).
Gals, another name for pit ponies (?girls).
Gang, a number of tubs moving together along a haulage road. Also known as a Train, Set, Journey or Run. –see also Rakes.
Gang Rider, a miner who rode on or with the trams to act as a guard. A train attendant. - see Gang.
Ganister, hard siliceous sandstone seatearth, often with root traces (pencil ganister). Can be used, crushed, to make fire bricks.
Gannen, a bord down which coals where transported in tubs on rails, as opposed to in corves or on runners. (N.East).
Ganney, a small piece of timber. (Som.).
Gannin board, a main roadway. (N.East).
Gannins, coal workings at the end of tunnels. (N.East).
Garland, a wooden or cast iron curb (gutter) set in the walling of a pit shaft to catch and convey away into a pipe or a lodge any water which runs down the sides of the shaft; or a wooden frame, rectangular in shape, strengthened with iron corner-plates, used for keeping the lumps of coal together on the top of a tram in a mine where heavy loading was practiced. The coals being piled high on the tram.
Gas cap, methane burning as a blue cone shape on the testing flame of a safety lamp, the height of the cone indicating the percentage of methane present in the mine atmosphere.
Gas coal, coal which yielded large amounts of commercial gas with little sulphur or other impurities; or cannel coal.
Gas drain, a heading driven for the sole purpose of carrying firedamp away from the waste or old workings; or a borehole drilled to drain off firedamp.
Gate or Gateroad, a roadway in a mine, usually applied to those serving a face, e.g. main gate, return gate, supply gate, top gate, bottom gate, mother gate, tail gate. Called a ‘dummy gate or level’ when ripped in the waste to provide packing material. A gate to the rise is called a ‘brake dip’, ‘jig dip’, ‘jig’, ‘dip gate’, ‘jenney’, ‘slant’ or ‘topple’. Also called a ‘stall road’, ‘trolley road’ or ‘incline’.
Gate-end box, the electrical supply point (panel) at the intake end of the face which supplies the electrical power to the shearer by means of a trailing cable.
Gate-end loader, - see Stage loader.
Gather, to drive a heading through broken or faulty ground to reach the coal on the other side. (Derbys.).
Gateside pack, a pack built to support the gate road.
Gauge door, a door fitted in a roadway in the mine with a sliding section, which acts as a shutter. The shutter was used to regulate the flow of air along the roadway. - see also Ventilation regulator.
Gautten or Gauton, a Scottish term for a ditch or gutter cut in the floor of the roadway to allow water to be drained away. Also pronounced ‘gatton’. (Scot.). They were also known as a ‘Grip’ in S. Derbys., a ‘Culvert’ in Coventry and a ‘Sough’ in Lancs.
Gauze lamp, a Davy lamp or a safety lamp.
Gaveller, the Crown Agent or Gale Giver, who granted gales to the Free Miners of the Forest of Dean.
Gavelock or gavelick, an iron bar, used as a lever. (N.East). - see also Gablock.
Gaw, a dyke of igneous rock (Scot.).
Gawl, an unevenness in the coal wall or face. (Lancs.).
Gearhead, the drive unit of a conveyor.
Gears, heavy wooden props. Two uprights and a crown piece being a set of gears or a pair of gears, used to support the roof. (Scot); or upright baulks or joists of wood put together in a framework on the shores of the R.Tyne along the top of which lay the waggonway for the delivery of coal to vessels. The whole gears at one landing place was called a ‘Staith’.
Geer, the working tools of the pitman. (N. East).
Gees, a mixture of alternate hard and soft layers of coal with smut partings.
General body of air, the current of air that is circulating through the mine along roadways, working places and airways.
General purpose coals, coals that were graded other than high-quality steam or coking coal.
Geordy or Geordie, safety-lamp invented by George Stephenson.
Germans, -see Straw fuse.
Getter, one who works out the coal.
Get or Getting, the mining or extraction of coal from the seam prior to loading.
Geyes, inferior cannel coal, also known as Jacks, Rattlejacks, Jay, Jays, Jay coal or Johnnies.
Ghaist, the white ash or cinder of shale or shaley coal. (Scot.).
Gibs, another word for ‘sprags’, i.e. holing props.
Gig or Ginn(e)y, gravity or self-acting haulage, or a winding engine. (Scot.).
Gin, an old form of hoisting apparatus, usually powered by a horse. –see Cog and rung gin and Horse whim.
Ginging, the walling of a pit shaft with brick, rather than lining the shaft with timber. Also called ‘gingoni’. (Derbys.).
Gin-pit, a shallow mine or pit shaft worked by a gin.
Ginon, -see Guynon.
Girder, a straight or arched steel roof support.
Girdles, sandstone bands in shale, (N.East).
Glance coal, another term for anthracite.
Gleg parting, the easy parting of one stratum from another. (Scot.).
Glennie blink, the miners’ name for ‘Nystagmus’. - see also Stag.
Gloster-getter, a type of cutter-loader with both horizontal and vertical cutter jibs.
Glut, pieces of timber used for packing behind the crib or tubbing in a shaft. (N.East); or a thin tapering wedge of wood used to fill in gaps between posts and their lids. (N.Staffs.); or a wooden wedge driven into a water feeder to stop or reduce the flow.
Goaf. The area from which the coal has been entirely extracted. The word is thought to have been derived from the Welsh word for cave. Along with ‘goave’ the term is often found in technical books on coal mining but is seldom, if ever, used by miners. The term ‘gob’ is the more common name. - see also Waste. Also called ‘shut’.
Gob, -see Goaf, but can also mean to stow waste material in the goaf; or to stow or pack a roadway with dirt.
Gobber, a man employed to pack waste into the gob.
Gob fire, spontaneous combustion or fire in the waste or gob.
Gob rank, a line of props on the gob side of the tub road. (Shrops.).
Gob road, -see Scour.
Gob side, the side of a roadway that ran parallel to the waste; or the waste side of a conveyor that runs along the coalface.
Gob stink, the smell associated with the early stages of spontaneous combustion of coal underground - see also Fire stink.
Goff or Goth, A sudden outburst of coal at the working face accompanied by a loud report. As a rule the coal and stone are projected from the face in a very shattered, and often powdered, condition. The outburst is due to the settlement of the roof producing a state of strain in the coal or its roof, or floor, eventuating in the sudden rupture, which is termed ‘goth’. Firedamp may, or may not, be liberated by this occurrence.
Going board, where the crane, flat, or station, is not at the end of the headways-course at the face, and the coals are brought down to it by a board for one, two, or more pillars, this board is called the going (or "gannen") board. (N.East).
Going headways, usually the headways-course next to the face. (N.East).
Goose, a water barrel or tub taken down the mine for the horses, or to suppress the dust when shot-firing. (F.of D.).
Goskins or ghoskins, nodules of inferior quality ironstone.
Got-on-Knobs, an early system of working the Thick Coal of South Staffordshire. A kind of bord and pillar system. The main roads were driven to the boundary and the coal was then worked on the retreat. (S.Staffs.).
Gout water, foul mine water. (F.of D.).
Gowl. The roof and sides were said to ‘gowl’ or ‘gowl out’ when they began to break down and cause trouble. (Derbys.).
Grain or Green, the ‘cleat’ or most pronounced planes of division traversing coal seams from roof to floor. (N.Staffs.).
Graip, large fork for separating lump coal from fines. Coal was shovelled onto the graip leaving smaller pieces to fall through the ‘tines’, leaving only the larger pieces. (Scot.).
Graith, a miner's tools. (Scot.).
Grass crop, another name for the outcrop of a coal seam. (Scot.).
Grathe, to put in order, to dress or replace a worn clack or bucket leather in a mine pump.
Gravimetric Dust Sampler, an airborne dust sampler developed at the NCB M.R.E.(Mines Research Establishment) to measure the mass of respirable dust over a whole working shift.
Gravity haulage, a system of haulage on inclined roadways where descending full tubs pull up the ascending empties.
Gray Dogs or Greydogs, laminated sandstone with coal streaks.
Gray-King Coal Type, an assessment of the caking properties of a coal seam from the examination of the coke residue from a test where the coal is carbonised at a controlled rate.
Greasy blaes, -see Creeshy blaes.
Great coal, large pieces of selected coal. In the East of Scotland, the coal was formerly divided into four grades, great coal, chews, lime-coal and panwood.
Great or Greet stone, coarse grained, gritty sandstone.
Greener, a very strongly marked cleavage plane in the coal seam, which is specially utilised in working off the coal. (N.Staffs.).
Green rock or Greenstone, an igneous intrusion into the coal measures, sometimes burning and/or destroying part or all of the coal seam. (S.Staffs.).
Green roof, roof of the coal at the face that has not had to stand open long supported on timber before being underpinned by the advancing pack.
Grew or Grewn. When the coal seam passes by fine graduations into the shale roof (or floor), the roof (or floor) and the seam are said to be ‘grewn’.
Grey bind, a sandy mudstone or shale.
Grey metal, shale.
Grey post, sandstone.
Grieve, the man who weighed the coal coming out of the mine for the coal owner. The ‘pitheadsman’. (Scot.).
Grimes, a term used in S.Wales for ‘bobbers’ and ‘bell moulds’. - see Coal balls.
Gripping, attaching clips to the rope haulage.(S. Staffs.).
Grist, a black coaly stratum found in the proximity of a coal seam. (S.Wales).
Grisley, coarse pyritous coal, irregular in thickness, and possessing spherical structure.
Grit, coarse grained sandstone, gritstone.
Grizzle, inferior coal with an admixture of specks and patches of pyrites, often sooty in appearance.
Grooves, a term sometimes used for pits or trenches dug on the outcrop of the coal – an early method of exploiting a coal seam; or long hollow cuts mare by a coal cutter.
Ground coal or Grounds, the lowest stratum of a coal seam. (Scot.).
Ground crab, -see Crab.
Grove, an old term for a mine, usually a lead or iron mine, but in the early days of coal mining it was also used for a coalmine. (Derbys.). –see also Day hole.
Growl. Coal pillars were said to growl when they were undergoing a crushing weight. (Mids.).
Grub, to dint or rip floor material.
Grunching, blasting the coal out of the solid seam without previous undercutting.
Gubbin, detatched masses of ironstone. –see also Balls and Penny stones. Also known as ‘Cakes’. The name of a clayband ironstone in N. Staffs.
Gug, a self acting haulage incline. Also known as a ‘running gug’. (Som.).
Gulibal Fan, a mine ventilation fan, invented by Monsieur Guibal in 1862, consisting of eight or more rectangular, flat, blades that leaned backwards and rotated inside a casing. Air from the mine was drawn into the centre of the fan and discharged from the blade tips.
Guides or Guide rods. Vertical rails of wood, metal or wire ropes to guide the cages in the shaft. -see Conductor and Rigid conductors. Also called ‘cage guides’ or ‘shaft guides’. Generally of two types, i) rigid guides of timber or steel (rails or channels), or ii) rope guides, comprising steel wire ropes hung from the headframe and held vertical and taut by weights hung at their lower ends.
Guiding bed, a thin layer of coal or carbonaceous shale which continues into the barren ground where a geological feature such as a washout has affected the seam.
Gulching, the moving and crackling noise made by a weight coming on. (N.Staffs.).
Gullet, a fissure in the strata allowing amounts of water or gas into the pit. (N.East).
Gum, free-burning small coal, slack or duff, very small coal, e.g., that would pass through a riddle 1/2-inch mesh or less. (Scot.).
Gum flinger, a ‘gummer’ who throws cuttings into the goaf. Also called a ‘gum stower’.
Gum stower, a device on a coal cutter that throws the fine cuttings on to the face conveyor. - see also Gum Flinger and Gummer.
Gummer, a person or machine used to clean the cuttings behind the coal-cutting machine; or a device attached to a coal cutter that deposits cuttings ejected behind the machine; or a device attached to and driven by an A F C that removes fine material deposited under the delivery sprockets.
Gummings, fine coal dust resulting from the action of a chain, bar, or gib coal-cutting machine; or just a general term for fine coal. Also known as ‘Buggy’, ‘Bug-dust’, ‘Scuftings’ or ‘Kirvings’.
Gunite, mortar supplied by a cement gun to the roof and sides of an excavation or the face of a stopping; or to spray with a cement gun.
Gurdy or Gurdy wheels, an arrangement of three pulleys with breaks for use on a self-acting incline. (Scot.).
Guss and crook or Guss harness, a length of rope fastened around the waist of the carting boy or ‘twin-boy’. The rope was attached to a chain and crook, which was used to pull along the carts or puts underground.
Gutter, a ditch cut in the main roadways to carry water away from the workings; or an airway through the goaf; or long narrow cavities in the roof of the face or a roadway referred to as ‘guttering’. Gutters were often dug as narrow tunnels from the lowest point of the workings to an adjoining valley. Also known as ‘soughs’ or ‘drainage adits’.
Guynon or Ginon, an easy shift. (Derbys., Leics.).
Back to list of Pit Terminology