coal-pit

Updated: May 1, 2025

Far as the eye could reach, and the region was level, except where a range of limestone hills formed its distant limit, a wilderness of cottages or tenements that were hardly entitled to a higher name, were scattered for many miles over the land; some detached, some connected in little rows, some clustering in groups, yet rarely forming continuous streets, but interspersed with blazing furnaces, heaps of burning coal, and piles of smouldering ironstone; while forges and engine chimneys roared and puffed in all directions, and indicated the frequent presence of the mouth of the mine and the bank of the coal-pit.

Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli - Sybil, or the Two Nations

While I was in that part of the country I was led to go down into a coal-pit in Shropshire, but my curiosity nearly cost me my life; for while I was in the pit the coals fell in, and buried one poor man, who was not far from me: upon this I got out as fast as I could, thinking the surface of the earth the safest part of it. In the spring 1784 I thought of visiting old ocean again.

Olaudah Equiano - The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African: Written By Himself

The ravine is of great depth—so deep and so gloomy-looking towards dusk, that local tradition records that when the Duke of Cumberland arrived late in the evening at the brow of the hill overlooking the Tyne, on his way to Culloden, he exclaimed to his attendants, on looking down into the black gorge before him, “For God’s sake, don’t think of taking me down that coal-pit at this time of night!” The road down the Gateshead High Street is almost as steep as the roof of a house, and up the Newcastle Side, as the street there is called, it is little better.

Samuel Smiles - Lives of the Engineers: The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson

I have, in vain, asked some assistance of those who have come to see me, not from humanity, but from unfeeling curiosity: thus, people went to Liege to see the brave Goffin, after he had extricated himself by his courage, from the coal-pit which had fallen in and buried him. But he, happier than I, was rewarded with the cross of the legion of honour, and a pension which enabled him to subsist.

Alexandre Corréard - Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816: Undertaken by Order of the French Government, Comprising an Account: of the Shipwreck of the Medusa, the Sufferings of the Crew, and the: Various Occurrences on Board the Raft, in the Desert of Zaara, at: St. Louis, and at the Camp of Daccard. to Which Are Subjoined: Observations Respecting the Agriculture of the Western Coast of: Africa, from Cape Blanco to the Mouth of the Gambia.