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Some Special Interests => Occupation Interests => Topic started by: melm on Saturday 11 February 06 11:34 GMT (UK)
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:) Hi,
I am curious to know what this occupation was, I worked all my life in the timber/building trade and seem to sense that it may be something to do with preparing laths on ceilings and walls ready for the plasterer to plaster onto, I may be totally wrong, any ideas?
melm ???
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Surely he was the forerunner of today's plasterer?
Denn
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Lath Renderer: Applied the first coat of plaster on wall & ceiling). (Plasterer's assistant
http://rmhh.co.uk/occup/l.html
Presume this is the one
Tricia
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:D Many Thanks, especially for the web page.
Regards, melm ;D
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Was thinking about this earlier - he must have made the render that the Lathe Renderer used in the first coat.
Plasterer's assistant's assistant ;D ;D
Tricia
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Hi there,
My G/Grandfather was a Pale Render in East Grinstead...
I had assumed that this meant that he made, (rended) palings for fences, etc.
I'm wondering now, - having read this thread about Lath Rending...(Or perhaps he was just naturally pale... ;D).
Any ideas welcome,
Cheers, Romilly.
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Hi Romilly
You will have seen these wooden fences where each stick has a wire round it which is twisted a few times before the next stick is fastened in?
The wood is rough and is just a branch which has been split in a cross into four pieces the guy who splits (rends) them, as you thought . In Scotland we call them 'palings'
He was probably red in the face from too much rending in a hot English sun!
I think they had a special tool a bit like a machete to split these branches. Can't remember what is was called? I know in my home village they used branches from chestnut trees for fencing.
Russell
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It was called a froe.
Denn
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Thanks Denn
They struck it with a maul. Or as we pronounced it 'maul'
Russell
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That didn't come out right!!!
'Mell' was what I intended. Must be getting past my bedtime.
Russell
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Hi Romilly
You will have seen these wooden fences where each stick has a wire round it which is twisted a few times before the next stick is fastened in?
The wood is rough and is just a branch which has been split in a cross into four pieces the guy who splits (rends) them, as you thought . In Scotland we call them 'palings'
He was probably red in the face from too much rending in a hot English sun!
I think they had a special tool a bit like a machete to split these branches. Can't remember what is was called? I know in my home village they used branches from chestnut trees for fencing.
Russell
Hi Russell,
Many thanks for the very comprehensive reply to my query!
Your description painted quite a picture for me of a pale render... ;D
Cheers, Romilly.
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:) Hi,
I am curious to know what this occupation was, I worked all my life in the timber/building trade and seem to sense that it may be something to do with preparing laths on ceilings and walls ready for the plasterer to plaster onto, I may be totally wrong, any ideas?
melm ???
There is much confusion between two entirely different verbs, 'to rend' and 'to render'. What these guys did was rend, not render. They split wood, they didn't plaster walls. The guys who plastered (or rendered) walls would have used the lath render's product, which is an unfortunate coincidence that simply adds to the confusion, and it doesn't help that the verb 'to rend' is rarely used these days, other than in expressions like "let no man rend asunder". Renders would rend wood asunder. Gardeners were also customers, using laths to make trellis work.
A pale render would also have split wood, typically chestnut I believe, to make fences, the palings joined by twisted wire. As a child in the 1950s in Lancashire our gardens were separated by such fences, and everyone referred to them as chestnut palings.
To call a lath render a lath renderer is as mistaken as calling a gardener a gardenerer or a footballer a footballerer, and the idea that he plastered walls arises from that error. Sadly, it's almost commonplace to see the mistake on family history websites, but the Victorian census enumerators understood well enough they were lath renders.