The landsale or land-sale system was a rental or tenement system occurring in the 18th and 19th centuries in Great Britain, named after the practice of local selling of coal and operation of small-scale "land sale" collieries.
This was in contrast to the larger scale, and highly mechanized "water-sale" collieries exporting coal by sea and later canal to southern England.
[2] While winter weather affected all mines the smaller land sale collieries were more prone to lying idle.
In the unusual case of the Wear Valley and South Durham land-sale miners were able to seasonally migrate to work on bigger water-sale collieries during part of the winter.
[5] Examples of landsale operations or rents under the landsale system include Brandon, County Durham where John Shaw was operating a landsale pit in 1836 using a whim-gin, usually employing horses or a bull, to raise the coal, Ushaw Moor Colliery where in 1858 a drift mine was established selling coal on this system, and Bedford Colliery at Guest Street where there was a landsale yard.