1) A minor place-name in the West Riding, possibly in connection with a standing stone or a cairn.
A minor place-name noted several times in the West Riding with three examples in the neighbourhood of Skipton: in each case Smith gives the meaning as ‘tree stump’ although he had found no early forms, and evidence for that interpretation in Yorkshire is lacking. There are one or two thirteenth-century place-names which have ‘standard’ as an element in other parts of England, and Smith offered the same meaning for these. ‘Standard’ was certainly a word used in connection with wood management but it would be inaccurate to call it a stump. In boundary descriptions, where examples of 'standard' are not uncommon, the term may originally have referred to a standing stone and then to a more substantial cairn of stones. In 1705-8, for example, witnesses in a Swaledale boundary dispute referred to boundary markers called Browney gill standard and Ridmer Standerd and these were probably stone cairns. More explicit was mention of a hurrock or standard called Gibbon Hill Standard, for ‘hurrock’ is a more common dialect word for a pile of loose stones. At the west end of Swaledale is the prominent cairn called Jack Standards, thought to be a Bronze Age burial site, and Dent had its three standerts. The best known of all the ‘standards’ though is Nine Standards Rigg: these are relatively tall cairns and references to the name date from the first half of the seventeenth century.
2) An upright bar, as in the railing of a bridge or in a window frame, of wood or iron.
1502 To John Conewey, smyth, for foure transoms and xij standardes ... in lede for the fastening of the same iron, York
a.1580 For helping to carry into the wryghte house standerdes, powles and boordes, Langwith
1589 for fleakes and wood laid over the water for passengers ... for wood for standerds, railes, Malton Bridge.