1) In Southowram, in 1777, this term was used to define more precisely the working area above ground in a colliery.
It was described as the Ground Room or Bank Room near the Pitts, a place where the operators might lay as well gravel, stone, scale, etc as also such coals as shall be gotten, Southowram. In other words it was an agreed area in which all the waste could be stacked and the coal stored prior to its sale. The right to store coal at the pit head was not new but the right to deposit the waste, if only for the duration of the lease, seems to mark a change in attitudes to land use, placing emphasis on industry rather than agriculture. Similar arrangements became usual from that time: 1813 Liberty … to dig and place and stack the Coals and Earth and Rubbish dug out of the pits on the Ground adjoining such Pits, Beeston.