day-hole

1) ‘Day’ was the miners’ word for the ground surface, and the ‘day-hole’ was a drift mine, one in which a gallery was driven from the surface on an inclined plane.

The word is still in such common use that we might expect it to have a long history but the only examples noted are recent, as in the dialect almanac of Tom Treddlehoyle 1883 ta hurry coils aht on a three fooit day-hoil, Barnsley, and a lease of 1916 in private hands: the rails now used in the Colliery Day-hole, the entrance to which is on the said piece of ground, Bradley.

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Photo by Kreuzschnabel CC BY-SA 3.0