Coal bin
storage container for coal
A coal bin, coal store or coal bunker is a storage container for coal awaiting use or transportation. This can be either in domestic, commercial or industrial premises, or on a ship or locomotive tender, or at a coal mine or processing plant.
Domestic coal bunkers are associated with the use of coal in open fires or for solid-fuel central heating. Free-standing bunkers were commonly made of wood or concrete and are currently sold in materials including plastic or galvanised metal. Coal bins or bunkers could also form an outhouse or be partly or fully underground.
Coal bins form or formed part of industrial plants, and were found on steam ships.
“Coal bin” enters the record as storage container for coal. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Coal, storage and container can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Coal bin” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Coal, storage and container provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 8, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q28402767. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Coal bin”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Coal bin primary sources, Coal bin archive and Coal research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Coal bin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.