Has anyone heard of the term ‘kidder’ being used (in this instance in rural Lincolnshire in the mid-late 1800s) to describe the occupation of a woodsman who would chop woods into faggots? Doing family history research and this has come up in 2 census results for a man who later is described as a ‘woodsman’ . Could I have two different people (though everything else matches) or did terminology change? Curious. Thanks.

Matt’s comment about “pimps” is incorrect. According to Edlin in his description of pimp making in “Woodland Crafts in Britain” (1949), “when 25 pimps are ready, they are bound into a large drum- shaped bundle….“.

Thus, the pimp is not the collection of 25 bundles, it is the single bundle.

His explanation in the video was in error, on his website, it is clear. A faggot is a specific volume of wood, typically about 3ft long and of a specific circumference. What he’s using in the video is ‘tops’, a brushwood faggot made from the thin top growth on shrubs (or pollarded/coppiced trees) that are one or two years old. As faggots, they’re far less uniform and unruly than larger ‘fuel’ wood and sticks, and so more tedious to determine their value. The solution was for the faggot to be chopped into segments of a uniform length, and collected into bundles of a uniform circumference, and bound. These are not ‘pimps’, they’re just bundles of kindling. A pimp is a collection of 25 bundles, which are tightly compressed and bound.

A Bavin is bigger than a Pimp & was used mostly in ovens or kilns. Faggots & Bavins are also used ‘to fuel’ where as Pimps are used ‘to light’ fires.

Faggots also have other uses besides fuel.

How does a pimp differ from a Bavin? Or are they the same thing?

We do not know the definitve meaning of the word pimp.One plausible theory is that ‘pimp’ is Welsh for five,and since 5×5=25,one pimp

I love the title! I’ve come across a bundle of sticks being called a faggot, but never heard of a collection of kindling being referred to as a pimp before!