Dook

Scots mining word for a roadway driven downhill, following the dip of the seam — the main route by which a Scottish colliery usually got men and coal between the pit bottom and its deeper workings.

Historical usage

Dook is a working Scots word rather than a formal engineering term, used throughout Scottish coalfields to describe a roadway driven to follow the seam downward, in contrast to a level roadway or one driven to the rise. A colliery's main dook was often its single most important underground route, carrying the bulk of its haulage traffic; at Cadder Colliery near Glasgow, for instance, the 'Main Dook Brae' dipped for about 1,500 yards from the pit bottom. A colliery divided for working purposes might describe one half of its layout as its 'Dook Section', naming the whole district after the direction its roadways ran rather than any specific single road.

How it worked

Because a dook follows the seam down its natural dip, coal loaded into hutches at the working face could run downhill toward the pit bottom under gravity or with only modest haulage assistance, while empty hutches had to be hauled back up — the same basic principle used on inclined tramways and railways generally, applied underground to the layout of the mine itself.

Why it was used

A dook was simply the natural, most direct way to follow a dipping seam from the shaft bottom to workings that lay both deeper and further away — the alternative, following the seam at a constant level, would have meant either abandoning the deeper coal entirely or driving a second shaft to reach it.

Risks & limitations

Workings below the general level of the pit bottom — 'dook workings' — posed a particular drainage problem, since water draining naturally downhill collects exactly where the coal is being worked rather than at the shaft where it can be pumped out; dook districts therefore generally needed their own dedicated pumping arrangements.

Regional variation

Specifically Scottish usage; the equivalent English and Welsh term for a roadway following the dip is usually simply an incline or a dip heading, without the same single dedicated word.

Mines associated with this term

Included only where MineArchive's own research gives a reasonable evidential basis — not every mine where this might plausibly apply.

• Argyll Colliery, Machrihanish — Argyll and Bute (well documented example)
  The Scottish term in everyday use at the colliery: the 1958 spontaneous-combustion fire broke out in the Slope Dook area, and because the dook lay higher than the working places, four seals had to be built before the area could be flooded to put it out.
• Auchenharvie Colliery — North Ayrshire (well documented example)
  Automatically linked by scripts/link_terms.py: exact-phrase match in the record's own recorded text.
• Herbertshire Colliery — Falkirk (well documented example)
  The 1893 explosion happened in the colliery's own 'Dook Section', named directly in the official inquiry report reproduced on the mine's page.

Disasters associated with this term

Included only where MineArchive's own research gives a reasonable evidential basis, with the nature of the relationship stated — not every disaster where this term might plausibly apply.

• Herbertshire Colliery explosion, 1893 (contextual relationship)
  Automatically linked by scripts/link_terms.py: exact-phrase match in the record's own recorded text.

Sources

1. (primary) Glossary of Scotch Mining Terms — James Barrowman (1886), via Scottish Mining Website
2. (secondary) Cadder Colliery Fire, Glasgow, 1913 — Northern Mine Research Society
3. (secondary) Glossary of mining terms (D) — North Staffordshire Mining Group

Record created: 25 August 2026 · Last researched: 25 August 2026