north. Also stapple. [Of obscure origin.] (See quots.) Also staple-pit.
1818. J. Adley, Coal Trade, 8.
| With sinking Staples and driving Drifts, | |
| You’re often put to all your shifts. |
1849. Greenwell, Gloss. Terms Coal Trade (1851), 51. Staple, a small pit, sunk upwards or downwards from one seam to another underground.
1862. Times, 28 Jan., 9/5. A ‘staple,’ or narrow shaft communicating with the upper seam.
1883. Gresley, Gloss. Coal-mining, 238. Staple or Staple Pit. A shallow shaft within a mine.
1883. Chamb. Jrnl., 17 Nov., 733/1. I was near done when I got out, and then I had to travel round about and get out by a stapple.
1887. P. M’Neill, Blawearie, 131. Bob Pringle has fa’en into a stapple fu’ o’ water in the great-seam waste.
1900. Engineering Mag., XIX. 714. Into all of these operations—cutting the coal by machinery,… hoisting trams up small ‘staple’ pits from one seam to another,… electricity now enters very largely.
