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.