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spellings baudekin baudkin
Forms of baldachin, a rich embroidered material which is said to derive its name from Bagdad where it was first made.
dates 1291 1389 1452 1490 1535

Piebald; an alternative term for a badger.
dates 1451 1505 1538 1578 1580 1690

A baker, especially the person responsible for the common bake-house or backhouse. The term could apply to either men or women.
dates 1379 1390 1483 1527 1556

An embankment or dam to retain water.
dates 1590 1612-1616

A fabric with worsted warp and woollen weft introduced into England in the sixteenth century, notably into Essex (FAW69).
dates 1655 1656 1706 1730

In the wall frame of a timber building a bay is the space between two sets of principal posts, so a three-bay house has two end walls and two pairs of intermediate posts. Local building practices meant that ‘bay’ came to be considered as a standard width although it differed from region to region.
dates 1579 1587 1630 1733-1734

Old French for ‘reddish brown’, used particularly for horses of that colour.
places Harpham York
dates 1257 1358 1404 1495

The space occupied by one bay of building.
places Dungworth Ripley
dates 1473 1560 1617

Possibly a mistake for 'base-stones'.
places Beverley
dates 1445-1446

spellings beadhouse bead roll
Relating to 'bead', the Middle English word for prayer.
dates 1454 1465 1485 1499 1517 1541 1543 1544

In Old English ‘beam’ was a tree and this meaning survives in compound names such as ‘hornbeam’. It came to refer to large pieces of squared timber, as used in house-building but was not very common in Yorkshire.
places Selby
dates 1434-1435

Verb relating to two different processes in cloth-making.
dates 1559 1605 1632 1783

This was the wattling between beams which would then be plastered.
places York
dates 1335

Bread made of bean meal, used as fodder for animals but eaten also by poor people.
places Horbury York
dates 1482 1589 1728

Possibly a local word for barley.
places South Cave
dates 1574

A child’s christening-robe.
places Slaidburn
dates 1621

To prevent the roof of a pit from falling in by leaving pillars of coal uncut, as in Northowram.
places Northowram
dates 1591

Chiefly an animal of the bovine kind.
dates 1347 1379 1558 1566 1616 1722

A cattle stall.
places South Cave
dates 1585

The right to pasturage for a beast in a stinted pasture.
dates 1574 1615 1740

The hide of an ox or cow.
places Tong Thirkleby
dates 1676 1712

A cattle shed.
dates 1637 1638

A regional word for a man practised in the healing of cattle, a ‘vet’ or ‘cow doctor’.
places Arksey
dates 1742

A track worn hard by the repeated passage of feet.
places West Riding
dates 1744

spellings brook
A stream.
dates 1502 1526 1537 1787

bed

As a verb this was used when worked out turf-pits were being restored.
places Malham Embsay
dates 1605 1615

This phrase occurs twice in deeds for Barkisland.
places Barkisland
dates 1502 1543

spellings cord (3)
A cord for stretching the sacking of a bed.
dates 1565 1611

Litter for horses or cattle.
dates 1546 1627 1664-1665 1708

A madman, an inmate of Bedlam or of a lunatic asylum.
dates 1604

spellings bedridden
Confined to bed through sickness or infirmity.
dates 1402 1444

A bed frame or its front and back parts.
dates 1518 1552 1571

Usually in the plural, since these were the principal timbers that linked the posts or stocks.
dates 1654 1657

Straw formerly constituted the bedding in most houses, almost certainly covered by a sheet or cloth.
places Monk Bretton
dates 1676

It has several possible meanings, but the Yorkshire contexts in which it occurs point to it as a possible spelling of ‘bail’ that is a frame to which cows are attached in the cow-house or mistal.
places Pudsey Lepton
dates 1628 1644

Occupational term, linked to Dutch immigrants to East Yorkshire in the fifteenth century.
dates 1416 1453 1490-1491 1493 1520

A bee-hive, probably made of straw (OED).
places South Cave
dates 1578 1586

Kaner suggested that the stock was the frame or stool on which a hive was placed and that is formally possible. In some contexts though it seems likely to have referred to a quantity of bees, a swarm.
dates 1561 1593 1668 1672

Minor place-name which marks the place in Beeston near Leeds where coal from local pits was stored in readiness for buyers.
places Beeston
dates 1656 1714

A beetle is a heavy wooden hammer, with a wide variety of shapes and uses. The verb means to beat or flatten.
places Thirkleby
dates 1608

Having the appearance of a beggar, mean, dirty and poverty-stricken, much used in insults and derogatory descriptions.
dates 1581 1672

Use, benefit, advantage.
dates 1454 1519 1629 1642

Possibly for ‘belled’; that is for animals with a bell attached.
dates 1541 1552 1562

spellings bildering
The noun ‘bilder’ was the name given to a wooden implement used for breaking up clods of earth (EDD) and Watson, the Halifax historian, said of ‘bildering’ that it was ‘Levelling the ground and breaking the clods of earth’. He considered it to be from ‘billing’; that is using a ‘bill’.
places Elland
dates 1661

A person employed to go round the town and make public announcements, attracting attention by ringing a bell.
dates 1358 1391 1435 1443 1497 1527-1528 1774

The single example noted referred to the cost of nails for bellows in a new chafery. These will have been made of wood and skins.
places Colne Bridge
dates 1746

spellings bull hide
No doubt hand-operated originally by hand and often described as a 'pair'.
dates 1317 1399-1400 1402 1509 1543 1553 1558 1698 1724

Occupational term for a maker of bellows.
places Sheffield
dates 1356 1699

One whose business it was to ring the church bells in order to draw attention to matters of local or national interest.
places Barnsley York
dates 1539 1745

A rare term for a maker of belts.
places Heslington
dates 1295

spellings pelyment
Spellings of ‘biliment’ which is dealt with separately.
places Halnaby
dates 1553

spellings benk (1)
North-country spellings of ‘bank’, that is a working section of the coal-face.
places Farnley
dates 1690

Half a ‘butt’, that is half the hide of an animal minus the belly and shoulders.
dates 1575 1577 1592 1622 1635 1672 1731

A piece of material used to secure an item of clothing or as decoration.
dates 1545 1619

Photo by Kreuzschnabel CC BY-SA 3.0