barrow

1) A wheeled handcart.

Barrows of different kinds have been used to carry heavy loads for centuries, certainly by coal-miners, since the men who moved coal from the coal-face to the shaft bottom were once called barrowers or barrowmen. Just what the early barrows looked like is uncertain but they may have been ‘boxes’ with shafts at each end, similar to those used by masons for carrying stone. In Yorkshire these were known as ‘bearbarrows’ or ‘bearing barrows’: 1395 Item x beringbarwes et ij whelebarwes, York

1419 1 berebarowe, precii ijd, Beverley. The implement and the word that described it remained in use, and there are examples into the eighteenth century at least: 1690 one bearing barrow, Lingards

1704 a bearing barrow, Holmfirth. However, these were items in farming inventories, at a time when corves not barrows were commonly used in coal-pits. No mention of ‘bearing barrow’ has been found in colliery accounts although ‘barrow’ and ‘barrowman’ both occur. Since bearing barrows have survived it is unlikely that they ever fell completely out of use.

spellings bearing barrow
dates 1395 1419 1690 1704

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Photo by Kreuzschnabel CC BY-SA 3.0