A "'bell pit "'is a primitive method of mining coal, iron ore or other minerals where the coal or ore lies near the surface.
22.
The pits, at that time, were basically bell pits and situated throughout the area where a network of small wagonways was built to take the coal to the canal.
23.
The early coal pits were dug to the shallow seams where they outcropped, particularly in the Irwell Valley and in adits or bell pits exploiting the Worsley Four Foot Mine.
24.
In historical times, before road, rail transport of large bells was possible, a " bell pit " was often dug in the grounds of the building where the bell was to be installed.
25.
Of the collieries, a number of colliery waste tips survive, now grown over, and the remains of shallow workings and bell pits are relatively common in some areas, with scheduled examples near Nant Mill.
26.
Early coal workings would have been shallow, probably bell pits; the nearest, deeper shaft marked on the Ordnance Survey map is about 800 m north of Cowley at SK337778, on the edge of modern Dronfield.
27.
This took the form of a bell pit, the extraction working outward from a central shaft, or a technique called room and pillar in which'rooms'of coal were extracted with pillars left to support the roofs.
28.
Today's miners, prospecting with modern drilling equipment, sometimes hit old drifts; this was, and is, a technique copied from the Welsh coal miners of south Wales and is much more effective than using bell pits.
29.
One branch of the vein was partly cut away at the outcrop, and a bell pit known as Duke's Sump was sunk on another branch " at some early date . " Whether lead was found is not known.
30.
The first record of a coal mine in Parkend dates back to 1718, although the remains of several bell pits, possibly dating back to the 1600s, are visible in the woods south-west of St Paul's church.
