Thank you all for your responses, which I very much appreciate.
The reference to feighing occurs in the Shibden Hall (Lister) papers in Calderdale Archives, in the
financial accounts for the sinking of the Hanging Hey pit in 1750-52 (this record has been well
used; articles on it appear in the transactions of the Halifax Antiq. Society in the '30s and in British
Mining in 1975 - I haven't yet obtained a copy of the latter). Two sinkers were contracted to dig
the pit at 8d per yard. When most of the sinking had been completed, the sinkers were paid 15/-
to £1 per week for several weeks to carry out feighing - clearly a significant exercise.
My inclination was to Trevor and Graham's suggestion that feighing is the removal of refuse,
though it does occur to me that surely the 8d per yard must include removal of spoil, on purely
practical grounds (this may be an excessively naive conclusion). Alternatively, perhaps, the
willingness of the landowner to fork out considerable sums for feighing supports Graham's
alternative definition, that is the removal of coal found during the sinking process.
A suggestive point is that feighing took place when sinking was virtually complete; also Hanging
Hey was connected in some way to another, probably disused, pit on the Shibden estate (Allen
Carr). Perhaps it refers to the clearing out of neglected passages or the driving of a connection
between the two and subsequent removal of the coal found. Certainly the accounts cite feighing
in Allen Carr and Hanging Hey separately and specifically.
David C.
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