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Corf Rods
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The Farndales and
Corf Rods
From the
writings of John Farndale, in the
Emigrant’s Return by John Farndale Then
passing down Cattersty Creak, where many a
cargo of smuggled goods have been delivered here, is a very choice place. The
last I remember in this place is that Tom Webster strangled himself by carrying
gin tubs round is neck. Once more I stand on Skinningrove duffy sands, where I have seen it crowded with
wood and corf rods for the North by the said Wm (FAR00183) and John (FAR00143) Farndale.
But what crowds of horses, men, and waggons,
when the gin ship appeared in view.
Corf Rods
A
Corf is a basket, used in mining to move coal
from underground to the surface.
Corf
Rods are generally half to three quarter inch
in diameter and used for making baskets called corves, which are employed for
drawing coals out of pits (Bailey’s Survey of
Durham, page 187).
Some
of the earliest examples of this word are in Scottish sources but it was not
generally used in England before the second half of the fifteenth century. At
that time the ‘corf’ was a basket, which links it etymologically to ‘Korb’,
the modern German word for basket, and the word might he been borrowed from the
Low German languages.
The
Oxford English Dictionary first notes the
use of ‘corf’ in connection with mining in
1653, at which time it may still be described as a basket. It was strong enough
to hold substantial amounts of coal and also to
withstand the rough treatment it received as it was moved about underground and
taken up and down the pit shaft.
The
construction of the earliest baskets was described in The
Compleat Collier: the ‘corver’
made them of hazel rods, with saplings of oak, ash or
alder for what the narrator called the ‘corf-bow’, probably a handle. They
needed to be sturdy since the corves were ‘subject to Clash and beat against
the Shaft sides’. Their function is described thus:
‘Labourers which are called Barrow-men … take the hewed Coals from the Hewers … and filling the Corves with these Wrought Coals
put or pull away the full Curves [sic] … upon a Sledge of Wood and so halled all along the Barrow-way to the Pit Shaft … where
they hook it by the Corf-Bow to the Cable, which … is drawn up to the top’.
In
Mr Cholmeley’s Coele’s
charges in June 1616 the items included picks, shovel irons, the collyer waige viijs,
and 2 corves, 4 stapples to them viijd. It is likely
that these ‘staples’ were U-shaped metal handles which may imply that the
corves were made of wood.
In
Farnley, in 1707, the accounts listed expenses for new Corves and of one
mending, for the wright worke 6s 4d, nailes 4d.
A
Beeston reference in 1754 to two corfes slipering 1s 8d, points to the use of iron runners. It is
known that corves were later made of wood and iron but perhaps the practice has
a longer history in some regions.
They
were certainly in use long before 1787, the date when they are said to have
been invented by a Sheffield ‘viewer’ called John Carr. However, Carr’s
contribution may have been that he fitted guides to prevent the corves from
bumping against the sides of the shaft when being raised.
By
the early nineteenth century corves had axletrees, cods, corner plates and
wheels: the cods were the axle bearings. Corves are mentioned regularly in
Yorkshire colliery accounts.