Now it emerges that 'winter hedge' (the 'h' of course silent) is no longer generally understood in Yorkshire. This is quite a shock. My sons' blank incomprehension when I talk to them was, I always thought, just a wind-up. So, all the more need for the Yorkshire Historic Dictionary - in the cause of intergenerational communication as well as a precious enduring record of terms and meanings.

Alex Medcalf, project archivist on the dictionary project (a partnership of Dr George Redmonds, the Borthwick Institute, and YAHS), has given a fascinating interview to the Yorkshire Post, published in today's paper. 

The Borthwick has also just posted a guest blog by Dr Redmonds, whose lifelong research is the core of this ambitious project.

A winter hedge is a clothes airer. (Different from the creel, on a pulley above the fire, which I guess descended from drying oatcakes, though that really was  before my time.) My grandma routinely used both terms into the 1980s, and they don't seem at all strange to me.