Glossary and further reading
Follow these links for
Glossary of terms
- Battardeau, also spelt Batter deaux, ‘a case of piling &c, without a bottom, fixed in the bed of the river, water-tight or nearly so, by which to lay the bottom dry for a space large enough to build the pier on. When it is fixed, its sides reaching above the level of the water, the water is pumped out of it, or drawn off by engines &c. till the space be dry’. Charles Hutton, Principles of Bridges (1772), pages 81-82
- Casson, also spelt Caisson, a ‘kind of chest, or flat-bottomed boat, on which a pier is built, and then sunk to the bottom of the river, and the sides loosened and taken off from the bottom, by a contrivance for that purpose, the bottom of it being left under the pier as a foundation’. Charles Hutton, Principles of Bridges (1772), p 87-88. The term is now used as analagous to ‘coffer-dam’.
- Disseisin, legal term for loss of possession of land. The writ of novel disseisin provided a procedure for the recovery of land of which one had been unlawfully dispossessed. It required a jury to answer 2 questions:If the answer to both was yes, the sheriff was supposed to restore the plaintiff in possession. 1) Had the plaintiff been disseised unjustly and without judgement? 2) Was the defendant the person who had done it? If the answer to both was yes, the sheriff was supposed to restore the plaintiff in possession. (with thanks to Chris Walton for this explanation)
- Distringas jurt (Latin), distringas juratores, a writ to require the sheriff to bring jurors to Court (with thanks to Chris Walton for this explanation)
- Drift, ‘Shoot, or Thrust of an arch is the push or force which it exerts in the direction of the length of the bridge’, Charles Hutton, Principles of Bridges (1772), page 91
- Fother, ‘of coals, one-third of a chaldron; about as many coals as a one-horse cart will contain… The word has come to be applied to a cart-load of anything in general…. The fother differs from the load, the latter being as much as can be carried on the back of a pack horse.’ (Heslop, p 300)
- Impost, a block, capital, or moulding from which an arch springs (Merriam-Webster, including an illustration)
- Interrogatories, Part of the legal process in a court case. Once the parties to a cause exchanged their primary cases on paper it was open to them to ‘interrogate’ the other party. That involved a series of questions seeking to clarify what the other was saying and in particular to obtain admissions. Apparently in this period the interrogatories could be addressed to persons not actually a party but known to be a party’s witness. Answers were on oath and could be referred to at trial if it was thought some helpful concession had been made. (with thanks to Chris Walton for this explanation)
- Quantum damnificatum, Latin legal term meaning ‘how much damage’
- Serjeant, (full title Serjeant-at-law) commonly a member of an order of barristers at the English bar. (Wikipedia)
- Spandrel, the space between the right or left exterior curve of an arch and an enclosing right angle (Merriam-Webster, including an illustration)
- Subpoena, an order that an individual must attend a court hearing, or that specific documents must be produced in court. (Cambridge English Dictionary). A ‘subpoena duces tecum’ (Latin) was a writ requiring a witness to atend court with some specified document
- take a heel: nautical term, to lean (OED).
For dialect words, the best source is a nineteenth-century glossary, R Oliver Heslop, Northumberland Words. A Glossary of Words Used in the County of Northumberland and on the Tyneside, English Dialect Society 1893-94, 2 vols. It is available in libraries, as a pdf on the Northumberland DVD published by flatcapsandbonnets.com, or (volume 2 only) on the Internet Archive.
Further reading
If you are interested in the topics raised by the Hexham Bridge transcriptions, here are some other books, articles, and websites you may want to look at;
- Heslop, Rev Oliver, Northumberland Words (see above)
- Linsley, Stafford,Tyne Crossings at Hexham up to 1795, Archaeologia Aeliana series 5 volume 22, (1994), 235-53
- Rennison, R W, The Great Inundation of 1771 and the Rebuilding of the North East’s Bridges, Archaeologia Aeliana series 5 volume 29, 2001, 269-92
- Ruddock, E. C.,’The Foundations of Hexham Bridge‘ Geotechnique, 27 (1977), no 3, 385-404. This is normally only available to subscribers to the Institution of Civil Engineering’s ICE Virtual Library, but they have kindly made it available to users of this website, and we are very grateful to them
- Ruddock, E. C., Arch Bridges and their Builders 1735-1835 (Cambridge 1979)
- Skempton, A. W., John Smeaton, FRS, Thomas Telford Ltd, 1981
- Ward, Robert, The Man Who Buried Nelson: the Surprising Life of Robert Mylne, Tempus 2007
