{"id":5590,"date":"2015-02-23T09:29:15","date_gmt":"2015-02-23T09:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/?p=5590"},"modified":"2015-02-23T09:40:16","modified_gmt":"2015-02-23T09:40:16","slug":"coracle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/?p=5590","title":{"rendered":"Coracle!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been in London for the weekend and one of the joys of visiting is a chance to see my niece Katherine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She’s currently in the middle of a project and is building a coracle<\/a> in her flat in Bermondsey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"coracle
Picture courtesy of Katherine Midgley<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like other vessels covered by a membrane stretched over a frame, coracles are an ancient form of water craft. The use of coracles in Britain was noted by Julius Caesar<\/a> on the occasion of his invasion of Britain in 55 BCE<\/abbr>.<\/p>\n

The etymology<\/a> of coracle is from the Welsh corwgl<\/em>, which is in turn related to Irish curach<\/em>, meaning a boat.<\/p>\n

Although an ancient form of craft, coracles have still found working uses up to the present day. For instance, for many years until 1979, Shrewsbury coracle maker Fred Davies achieved some notability amongst football fans; he would sit in his coracle during Shrewsbury Town FC<\/a> home matches at their old riverside ground of Gay Meadow<\/a> and retrieve stray balls from the River Severn. His coracle was last heard of in the National Football Museum<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Coracles are difficult to manoeuvre as they are unstable due to their sitting “on<\/em>” that water. In addition, coracles can easily be carried by currents and the wind. Nevertheless, let’s hope the maiden voyage is recorded for posterity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been in London for the weekend and one of the joys of visiting is a chance to see my niece Katherine. She’s currently in the middle of a project and is building a coracle in her flat in Bermondsey. Like other vessels covered by a membrane stretched over a frame, coracles are an ancient […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,17],"tags":[22],"class_list":["post-5590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-translation-and-language-related-matters","category-oddities","tag-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5590"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5597,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5590\/revisions\/5597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}