Friday 25 February 2011
Friday 18 February 2011
No 87. ORKNEY CHAIRS.
No 81. THE MANY USES OF STRAW.
In days of old straw was much used in Orkney for furniture, baskets, cassies for carrying peats or dung or grain, flackies to put over the backs of horses to pad them from the clibber, a wooden frame like a saddle from which a cassie could be carried either side. Flackies could also do service as rudimentary doors. No doubt Caithness had cassies too to carry grain to Staxigoe for shipping to Norway among other countries. As Aneas Bayne A.M. wrote about Caithness in 1734:-
The Trade of export of the Shire of Caithness consists mostly in Corns, wherof they export in any good year 16,000 Bolls at the Ports of Thurso, viz:- Scrabster Road, a small way West of the Town and at the River mouth, and at Staxigoe Harbour near the Town of Wick, half meal, half bear. They likewise transport a great deal of victuall to Strathnaver in Sutherland !! .
Without carts or roads in Caithness such grain was carried on the backs of the uniquitious pack horse. Lines of them tied head of one to tail of the horse in front were usual. Hence the meaning of the phrase nose to tail!!
For furniture straw was used for the now much sought after Orkney Chairs, but such chairs were pretty universal at one time. Mostly home-made by the men at the peat fire during the long dark winter nights.
At the Central School we were taught the rudiments of working straw, in my case a straw basket. The straw basket Nettie and I made in 1954 is still very functional on my visits to the superstores in Thurso. It is only 57 years old. We could and shoud be making. more use of our natural resources !!
An Orkney Chair was made as a wedding present for our grandfather David Pottinger, then of Upper Stove, Deerness, on his marriage to Elizabeth Tait of Campston on 19th August 1880. That event was the very first entry in William Tait’s Diaries. William was Elizabeth’s younger brother, aged 19 at the time. That chair is still at Greenland Mains with brother Hamish, as good as new, well, almost.
The very first entry in the Diaries begun in 1880 was:-
Aug 16 mon At Kirkwall with 5 sheep to G. Macgror. sold at £7.7.
Aug 17 tues At Lammas Market [ Kirkwall ] and bought a foal for £6.
Aug 18 wed At Cattle Show - preparing barn for wedding [ at Campston]
Aug 19 thur Elizabeth married this night - very fine night Aug 20 frid At Kirkwall with a cart with cussins from Caithness
Aug 21 sat At Kirkwall with three Carts with seats.
An Orkney Chair is a treasure much sought after, both at home and abroad. Usually a long waiting list of over a year to get one made. It is still a craft in Orkney with very expensive straw chairs yet being made by Robert H.Towers near Kirkwalll. His site is on the internet, well worth a look if only for educational purposes.
I mention him in passing because of his Stronsay connections. His grand father Tom Towers re-roofed the feeders’ byre at Whitehall with Welsh Slate for my father, working along with Tom Anderson, a mason, both knacky men. We watched them at work with admiration.
Gloy was the name used for oat straw when cleaned and ready for making baskets or chairs. To get the straw ready for making a chair or a basket a knocking stane was used in the barn. This was a flat flagstone built into the inside of the wall about 4 feet off the floor, projecting about six inches from the wall, and about two feet wide. We had one at Whitehall. It was called variously a knocking stane, a shakin stane, a gloy stane.
A handful of unthrashed straw from a sheaf of bright clean neepland oats was held tightly and the head end struck down on the stone, knocking off the grain and the chaff, a rough thrashing. The straw had to be kept as straight as possible. The leaves were then stripped from the stalk, the head end trimmed, and the resulting new-cleaned straw made up in tidy bundles was the gloy we used to make straw baskets at school. And by many a knacky man to make Orkney chairs.
And the same technique of clean straw is still used though I would think the old knocking stane is no longer in use.
I remember an Orkney Chair being made by Ould Pat Shearer, retired by my time from being one of our grandfather’s workers at Whitehall. He began with making the wooden frame of the chair in the farm workshop. A labour of love I think, but, as they say, he was “good wae his hands”. Worth watching the effortless way a skilled man did a job. And still is!!
There are tales in treeless Orkney of drift wood gathered from the beach being used to make a chair and I have no doubt it was so. I have seen a chair so made but it was not a straw backed one. They waste nothing across the Pentland!!
At school we had to hand make a special cord for the coming task of making a basket, made with imported raffia. We went down to the shore at Mill Bay to the sand dunes and gathered some specially hard Marram grass to add to the cord. Gave it a really hard wearing centre, good enough for 130 years in the case of our grandparents chair. Take some raffia, twist it right handed into a continuous double cord, cross it over left handed to make a self supporting two ply cord. Feed in a small amount of Marram as you go along for extra strength. Hard and strong and quite attractive, a skill on its own. Took some time and practice to get proficient at it, and we had to make most ot it at home.
When making the basket or the Orkney Chair the gloy was fed on the run in small but continuous amounts into the band being stitched. Your measure was just the amount that fitted confortably into your closed hand, the feel of it dictated when more was needed. .
The butt end of the straw was put into the centre of the band as we went along, leaving the finer and thinner upper ends of the straw to be seen from the outside, giving an attractive neat finish. The stitching was always done with a six inch sail maker’s needle, curved at the outer end, a big eye for the cord. We used a similar needle for stitching the wool bags.
The Orkney Chair could be simple but could be very sophisticated indeed. There are some for sale on the internet by a maker in Orkney and the range is azazing. The usual wood for the chair was clean-grained pine. Pitch Pine was also a beautiful wood for doors and shutters in older houses. Isauld House, now over 200 years old, had a good share once the paints and varnishes of long ago had been cleaned off to find the superb wood below.
Pine was much used for Orkney Chairs. Making one was a slow task, though the finished chair was a work of art. It was rare to come into any house in my early days in Stronsay and not find at least one if not more. The main enemy of Orkney chairs was woodworm, all too common in the moist climate of Orkney.
The range of chairs available from one maker uses Sapele wood from Africa as well as Pine. A very beautiful nice coloured fine grained wood, it adds about £50 to the price but when you are payng well over £1,000 for the more ornate chairs what’s £50.
Orkney Chairs ranged from the basic chair to ones with a drawer, usually front opening, but sometimes side so you could open it without getting off the chair. There was a granny chair that had a straw hood right over the top, very good to keep draughts off your neck!
In days of old straw was much used in Orkney for furniture, baskets, cassies for carrying peats or dung or grain, flackies to put over the backs of horses to pad them from the clibber, a wooden frame like a saddle from which a cassie could be carried either side. Flackies could also do service as rudimentary doors. No doubt Caithness had cassies too to carry grain to Staxigoe for shipping to Norway among other countries. As Aneas Bayne A.M. wrote about Caithness in 1734:-
The Trade of export of the Shire of Caithness consists mostly in Corns, wherof they export in any good year 16,000 Bolls at the Ports of Thurso, viz:- Scrabster Road, a small way West of the Town and at the River mouth, and at Staxigoe Harbour near the Town of Wick, half meal, half bear. They likewise transport a great deal of victuall to Strathnaver in Sutherland !! .
Without carts or roads in Caithness such grain was carried on the backs of the uniquitious pack horse. Lines of them tied head of one to tail of the horse in front were usual. Hence the meaning of the phrase nose to tail!!
For furniture straw was used for the now much sought after Orkney Chairs, but such chairs were pretty universal at one time. Mostly home-made by the men at the peat fire during the long dark winter nights.
At the Central School we were taught the rudiments of working straw, in my case a straw basket. The straw basket Nettie and I made in 1954 is still very functional on my visits to the superstores in Thurso. It is only 57 years old. We could and shoud be making. more use of our natural resources !!
An Orkney Chair was made as a wedding present for our grandfather David Pottinger, then of Upper Stove, Deerness, on his marriage to Elizabeth Tait of Campston on 19th August 1880. That event was the very first entry in William Tait’s Diaries. William was Elizabeth’s younger brother, aged 19 at the time. That chair is still at Greenland Mains with brother Hamish, as good as new, well, almost.
The very first entry in the Diaries begun in 1880 was:-
Aug 16 mon At Kirkwall with 5 sheep to G. Macgror. sold at £7.7.
Aug 17 tues At Lammas Market [ Kirkwall ] and bought a foal for £6.
Aug 18 wed At Cattle Show - preparing barn for wedding [ at Campston]
Aug 19 thur Elizabeth married this night - very fine night Aug 20 frid At Kirkwall with a cart with cussins from Caithness
Aug 21 sat At Kirkwall with three Carts with seats.
An Orkney Chair is a treasure much sought after, both at home and abroad. Usually a long waiting list of over a year to get one made. It is still a craft in Orkney with very expensive straw chairs yet being made by Robert H.Towers near Kirkwalll. His site is on the internet, well worth a look if only for educational purposes.
I mention him in passing because of his Stronsay connections. His grand father Tom Towers re-roofed the feeders’ byre at Whitehall with Welsh Slate for my father, working along with Tom Anderson, a mason, both knacky men. We watched them at work with admiration.
Gloy was the name used for oat straw when cleaned and ready for making baskets or chairs. To get the straw ready for making a chair or a basket a knocking stane was used in the barn. This was a flat flagstone built into the inside of the wall about 4 feet off the floor, projecting about six inches from the wall, and about two feet wide. We had one at Whitehall. It was called variously a knocking stane, a shakin stane, a gloy stane.
A handful of unthrashed straw from a sheaf of bright clean neepland oats was held tightly and the head end struck down on the stone, knocking off the grain and the chaff, a rough thrashing. The straw had to be kept as straight as possible. The leaves were then stripped from the stalk, the head end trimmed, and the resulting new-cleaned straw made up in tidy bundles was the gloy we used to make straw baskets at school. And by many a knacky man to make Orkney chairs.
And the same technique of clean straw is still used though I would think the old knocking stane is no longer in use.
I remember an Orkney Chair being made by Ould Pat Shearer, retired by my time from being one of our grandfather’s workers at Whitehall. He began with making the wooden frame of the chair in the farm workshop. A labour of love I think, but, as they say, he was “good wae his hands”. Worth watching the effortless way a skilled man did a job. And still is!!
There are tales in treeless Orkney of drift wood gathered from the beach being used to make a chair and I have no doubt it was so. I have seen a chair so made but it was not a straw backed one. They waste nothing across the Pentland!!
At school we had to hand make a special cord for the coming task of making a basket, made with imported raffia. We went down to the shore at Mill Bay to the sand dunes and gathered some specially hard Marram grass to add to the cord. Gave it a really hard wearing centre, good enough for 130 years in the case of our grandparents chair. Take some raffia, twist it right handed into a continuous double cord, cross it over left handed to make a self supporting two ply cord. Feed in a small amount of Marram as you go along for extra strength. Hard and strong and quite attractive, a skill on its own. Took some time and practice to get proficient at it, and we had to make most ot it at home.
When making the basket or the Orkney Chair the gloy was fed on the run in small but continuous amounts into the band being stitched. Your measure was just the amount that fitted confortably into your closed hand, the feel of it dictated when more was needed. .
The butt end of the straw was put into the centre of the band as we went along, leaving the finer and thinner upper ends of the straw to be seen from the outside, giving an attractive neat finish. The stitching was always done with a six inch sail maker’s needle, curved at the outer end, a big eye for the cord. We used a similar needle for stitching the wool bags.
The Orkney Chair could be simple but could be very sophisticated indeed. There are some for sale on the internet by a maker in Orkney and the range is azazing. The usual wood for the chair was clean-grained pine. Pitch Pine was also a beautiful wood for doors and shutters in older houses. Isauld House, now over 200 years old, had a good share once the paints and varnishes of long ago had been cleaned off to find the superb wood below.
Pine was much used for Orkney Chairs. Making one was a slow task, though the finished chair was a work of art. It was rare to come into any house in my early days in Stronsay and not find at least one if not more. The main enemy of Orkney chairs was woodworm, all too common in the moist climate of Orkney.
The range of chairs available from one maker uses Sapele wood from Africa as well as Pine. A very beautiful nice coloured fine grained wood, it adds about £50 to the price but when you are payng well over £1,000 for the more ornate chairs what’s £50.
Orkney Chairs ranged from the basic chair to ones with a drawer, usually front opening, but sometimes side so you could open it without getting off the chair. There was a granny chair that had a straw hood right over the top, very good to keep draughts off your neck!
Friday 4 February 2011
No 74. Learning Weights by Rote. pb 4/2/2011
A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.
2 lb and 1 lb iron weights in the shop scales in W.P.Drever’s shop in Whitehall Village.
A 19th-century steelyard., but its origins go back 2000 years.to the time of Christ.
ARTICLE BEGINS. FOTOS ABOVE IF USABLE.
No 62. WEIGHTS ON THE FARM.
The weights we used in Whitehall long before metrication were the old Imperial Measure ones, sometimes called Avoirdupois for smaller items but not on the Farm. Everything was in lbs or multples thereof, lbs. stones,.quarters (2 stones), cwts, tons. Converted to the Metric Scale of today, 2.2 lbs is a near kilo { kilogram ]. And so on.
At school early on we learned by rote our Table of Weights, 16 ozs is a lb, 14 lbs is a stone, 2 stones is a quarter, 4 quarters is a cwt. 20 cwts is a ton. Phew. To hear a whole classroom reciting that was quite something. Drilled it into you. A tod was the same weight as a quarter, 28 lbs, but used only in weighing wool. Stilll, I think I have heard the word “a tod” used long since by older people but I doubt if the old quantitative meaning is now known. .
Informally, we still use a ton when we mean something very heavy. "This suitcase weighs a ton!" It is wonderful that so many people today use the phrase when they have long forgotten how much a ton weighs. Or never knew !! Such is the beauty of our English language.
The old stone of 14 lbs is now a meaningless 6.4 kilos, a cwt of 112 lbs is approx. 50 kilograms (kilos), the old ton of 2240 lbs has long been superceded by the European Tonne of 1000 kgs. It is now illegal to have bags of cement weighing a cwt, it has to be in 25 kg.bags by H. and S. E. and by European rules. We do not hear much now of “a strong man” unless it be in a T.V. Competition. Or at a Highland Games. One can marvel at the physical fitness of yesterday that gave us a cattle drover, Gunn to name from Braemore, Dunbeath, who, legend has it, walked from Inverness to Braemore in one day. I presume he took the row boat ferries at the Kessock and Dornoch Firths, but that it is not related.
. A long day I would think, but drovers were as hard as naiIs. They had to be. Driving droves of cattle from Caithness to Carlisle in the days of one of my great great grandfathers James Tait of Inkstack was not a picnic. As related by his grandson William Tait of Ingsay the Diarist in a talk he gave to the Orkney Agricultural Discussion Society pre 1939 when their Transactions were published.
We weighed grain in cwts and half cwts. It was measured in quarters which was a quantity measure of 8 bushels. Our grain bags were 4 bushel in size. I do not know the origin of the name quarter used for grain, it is a different quarter than the 28 lb tod for wool which was a simple quarter of a cwt. . A quarter of oats was 3 cwts, a half quarter 4 bu. sack held 1½ cwts. A quarter of barley was 4 cwts, a quarter of wheat was 4¼ cwts.
Our loft weighing machine was simple enough, sturdy, a tray either side of a central pivot. One tray held the weights, the other held the bag of whatever we were weighjng. Could be tatties, could be grain, could be a man himself!!
The weights were of cast iron, some had a ring handle, others had a handle part of the casting itself. All had a small hole underneath into which lead was poured or taken out to meet the standard weights as checked by the Customs at the Head of the pier. I once remember our father taking the weights down to the Village to get them certified and marked in the lead by a dated stamp.
The other measure was barrels, but by my time barrels was nearly out of use. They held sway for many long centuries. The earliest use oif barrels I have come across was in the Will and Testament of William Pottinger in Swartaquoy in Holm in Orkney in 1612 who had:-
“Sawen upone the rowme of Swartaquoy, 3 barrellis aittis weyand 1 meill 1 setting extending to 3 meillis 3 settingis, £1 6s 8d, £4 13s 4d;
In the barne, 2 barrellis beir weyand 8 settingis, £2 the meill, £2 13s 4d;
1 hardin web of 6 eln @ 4s, £1 4s; “
Much later in 1896 at the Bu of Rousam William Tait’s Diary records
1896 Sept 07 wed
Took home 4 ton 18 cwt of coal today - 14 barrel to engine - 21 barrel in coal house - 14 barrel to Thomas Miller.
Weighed in cwts, measured in barrels. That above entry makes a barrel of coal a neat 2 cwts. Just enough for one man to carry.
The coal for the engine was the steam engine which drove the threshing mill in the barn. The coal for the house was the farm house. Tom Miller got part of his wages in barrels of coal.
Potatoes were measured by the barrel. I think the old phrase “ full measure “ meant just that, fill it to the top. There was an official stamp branded on many of the barrels to certify and denote their capacity, though unstamped barrels of different sizes were used for many purposes.
Hay was sold by the stone of 14lbs., or estimated by a valuer in stones if being taken over in a new tenancy. Weighed by guesswork at times, but sometimes over the weigh-bridge in the case of some hay bought by and some sold by Wm Tait in his Diary of 1892 from the farm of Work outside Kirkwall where he worked for a few years with his brother-in-law Robert Lennie, tenant of Work Farm and married to Wm Tait’s sister Anne from Campston. In his Diary for 1892 were the entries of :-
may 03 tues Two carts at Holm for hay from Quoys –
gross weight of both carts 20 cwt 4 qrs - 43 st 6 lb. hay.
may 13 frid. At Weyland for 97 st hay – at Kirkwall for hay from Midbigging, 30 stn.
- very fine day
sept 08 thur - put a load of hay to J. & W. Tait, 29 stones.
I am sure they did not go over a weighbridge for every load so much was taken in good faith. If a weighbridge was available then it was used. Most small Islands in Orkney had one at the Head of the Pier, used in Stronsay for weighing the loads of coal we bought from David Chalmers. Horse and cart on it empty, then again when full, simple enough.
The most interesting weighing machine in Whitehaa was based on the old Roman steel yard, though it might have pre-dated the Romans. One was found in Pompei, buried in volcanic ash from the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79, stlill in working order. I think the Greeks had the steelyard even earlier. The name Steelyard, it is suggested, derives from the name of the old 14th Century Hanseatic League Trading Market Place in London. Which gave name to which I cannot tell !!
The steel yard was a beautiful balanced bar of well oiled and polished steel and brass. There were two stops to prevent it swinging too far either way. It was used to measure out meal for the workers, or for sale to anyone else. The meal was scooped out from the capacious meal girnel into the very large polished brass pan. The steelyard was suspended off centre from the rafters at a workable height. The brass scoop hung from the short end, the other end of the steel yard was a long horizontal bar measured in marked notched increments and had a sliding brass weight to move along to the balance point. It was very sensitive, a small amount of meal would tip it either way.
To we small ones the magic of the steelyard was fascinating, we never did get the mechanics of it properly into our heads.
2 lb and 1 lb iron weights in the shop scales in W.P.Drever’s shop in Whitehall Village.
A 19th-century steelyard., but its origins go back 2000 years.to the time of Christ.
ARTICLE BEGINS. FOTOS ABOVE IF USABLE.
No 62. WEIGHTS ON THE FARM.
The weights we used in Whitehall long before metrication were the old Imperial Measure ones, sometimes called Avoirdupois for smaller items but not on the Farm. Everything was in lbs or multples thereof, lbs. stones,.quarters (2 stones), cwts, tons. Converted to the Metric Scale of today, 2.2 lbs is a near kilo { kilogram ]. And so on.
At school early on we learned by rote our Table of Weights, 16 ozs is a lb, 14 lbs is a stone, 2 stones is a quarter, 4 quarters is a cwt. 20 cwts is a ton. Phew. To hear a whole classroom reciting that was quite something. Drilled it into you. A tod was the same weight as a quarter, 28 lbs, but used only in weighing wool. Stilll, I think I have heard the word “a tod” used long since by older people but I doubt if the old quantitative meaning is now known. .
Informally, we still use a ton when we mean something very heavy. "This suitcase weighs a ton!" It is wonderful that so many people today use the phrase when they have long forgotten how much a ton weighs. Or never knew !! Such is the beauty of our English language.
The old stone of 14 lbs is now a meaningless 6.4 kilos, a cwt of 112 lbs is approx. 50 kilograms (kilos), the old ton of 2240 lbs has long been superceded by the European Tonne of 1000 kgs. It is now illegal to have bags of cement weighing a cwt, it has to be in 25 kg.bags by H. and S. E. and by European rules. We do not hear much now of “a strong man” unless it be in a T.V. Competition. Or at a Highland Games. One can marvel at the physical fitness of yesterday that gave us a cattle drover, Gunn to name from Braemore, Dunbeath, who, legend has it, walked from Inverness to Braemore in one day. I presume he took the row boat ferries at the Kessock and Dornoch Firths, but that it is not related.
. A long day I would think, but drovers were as hard as naiIs. They had to be. Driving droves of cattle from Caithness to Carlisle in the days of one of my great great grandfathers James Tait of Inkstack was not a picnic. As related by his grandson William Tait of Ingsay the Diarist in a talk he gave to the Orkney Agricultural Discussion Society pre 1939 when their Transactions were published.
We weighed grain in cwts and half cwts. It was measured in quarters which was a quantity measure of 8 bushels. Our grain bags were 4 bushel in size. I do not know the origin of the name quarter used for grain, it is a different quarter than the 28 lb tod for wool which was a simple quarter of a cwt. . A quarter of oats was 3 cwts, a half quarter 4 bu. sack held 1½ cwts. A quarter of barley was 4 cwts, a quarter of wheat was 4¼ cwts.
Our loft weighing machine was simple enough, sturdy, a tray either side of a central pivot. One tray held the weights, the other held the bag of whatever we were weighjng. Could be tatties, could be grain, could be a man himself!!
The weights were of cast iron, some had a ring handle, others had a handle part of the casting itself. All had a small hole underneath into which lead was poured or taken out to meet the standard weights as checked by the Customs at the Head of the pier. I once remember our father taking the weights down to the Village to get them certified and marked in the lead by a dated stamp.
The other measure was barrels, but by my time barrels was nearly out of use. They held sway for many long centuries. The earliest use oif barrels I have come across was in the Will and Testament of William Pottinger in Swartaquoy in Holm in Orkney in 1612 who had:-
“Sawen upone the rowme of Swartaquoy, 3 barrellis aittis weyand 1 meill 1 setting extending to 3 meillis 3 settingis, £1 6s 8d, £4 13s 4d;
In the barne, 2 barrellis beir weyand 8 settingis, £2 the meill, £2 13s 4d;
1 hardin web of 6 eln @ 4s, £1 4s; “
Much later in 1896 at the Bu of Rousam William Tait’s Diary records
1896 Sept 07 wed
Took home 4 ton 18 cwt of coal today - 14 barrel to engine - 21 barrel in coal house - 14 barrel to Thomas Miller.
Weighed in cwts, measured in barrels. That above entry makes a barrel of coal a neat 2 cwts. Just enough for one man to carry.
The coal for the engine was the steam engine which drove the threshing mill in the barn. The coal for the house was the farm house. Tom Miller got part of his wages in barrels of coal.
Potatoes were measured by the barrel. I think the old phrase “ full measure “ meant just that, fill it to the top. There was an official stamp branded on many of the barrels to certify and denote their capacity, though unstamped barrels of different sizes were used for many purposes.
Hay was sold by the stone of 14lbs., or estimated by a valuer in stones if being taken over in a new tenancy. Weighed by guesswork at times, but sometimes over the weigh-bridge in the case of some hay bought by and some sold by Wm Tait in his Diary of 1892 from the farm of Work outside Kirkwall where he worked for a few years with his brother-in-law Robert Lennie, tenant of Work Farm and married to Wm Tait’s sister Anne from Campston. In his Diary for 1892 were the entries of :-
may 03 tues Two carts at Holm for hay from Quoys –
gross weight of both carts 20 cwt 4 qrs - 43 st 6 lb. hay.
may 13 frid. At Weyland for 97 st hay – at Kirkwall for hay from Midbigging, 30 stn.
- very fine day
sept 08 thur - put a load of hay to J. & W. Tait, 29 stones.
I am sure they did not go over a weighbridge for every load so much was taken in good faith. If a weighbridge was available then it was used. Most small Islands in Orkney had one at the Head of the Pier, used in Stronsay for weighing the loads of coal we bought from David Chalmers. Horse and cart on it empty, then again when full, simple enough.
The most interesting weighing machine in Whitehaa was based on the old Roman steel yard, though it might have pre-dated the Romans. One was found in Pompei, buried in volcanic ash from the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79, stlill in working order. I think the Greeks had the steelyard even earlier. The name Steelyard, it is suggested, derives from the name of the old 14th Century Hanseatic League Trading Market Place in London. Which gave name to which I cannot tell !!
The steel yard was a beautiful balanced bar of well oiled and polished steel and brass. There were two stops to prevent it swinging too far either way. It was used to measure out meal for the workers, or for sale to anyone else. The meal was scooped out from the capacious meal girnel into the very large polished brass pan. The steelyard was suspended off centre from the rafters at a workable height. The brass scoop hung from the short end, the other end of the steel yard was a long horizontal bar measured in marked notched increments and had a sliding brass weight to move along to the balance point. It was very sensitive, a small amount of meal would tip it either way.
To we small ones the magic of the steelyard was fascinating, we never did get the mechanics of it properly into our heads.
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