buddle

1) As a noun this is a shallow vat in which ore is washed (OED).

The term is first recorded in an Act of 1531-2. The verb means to wash ore using such a buddle or, as described by Raistrick and Jennings, by building ‘a channel of wood a foot or two wide and a few feet long, slightly sloped with a stream of water running down it’: 1642 for their use of budling, or washing their ure, Grassington. The reference to budlebords in the same context may point to that method.

places Grassington
dates 1642

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