Used for washing clothes in a river or stream. The clothes were beaten or rubbed with bat. The bat which is carved on both sides and has a scratched dated of 1815.

Beech

Welsh

29″ long x 4½” wide x 2½” deep / 73.7cm long x 11cm wide x 6.3cm deep

£180

From ‘Treen and Other Turned Bygones for Collectors’ by Jane Toller.

Page 151 – Washing Bats and Mangling Boards. In early days, before the advent of washing tubs and Peggy sticks, clothes had to be washed in a stream and beaten on stones or rocks with wooden bats to get the dirt out. The bats used in Britain were not unlike cricket bats in shape, though some had longer handles and wider blades. Some blades were plain rounded ones, others were flat, and corrugated on one side, on which the clothes could be rubbed to speed the cleaning process.