We have a caving fork in our collection at Market Lavington Museum. This is not a piece of speleology equipment for potholers, but was used during the threshing process on arable farms.
Before the days of combine harvesters, threshing machines were used to separate the corn seeds from the straw. See Steam Threshing, Market Lavington, Threshing in 1945 and Threshing in 1976. This was quite labour intensive work and one person would use a caving or keeving fork to clear straw away from the machine.
Our fork belonged to Aubrey Williams, of Court Close Farm in Easterton, hence the initials AW.
Market Lavington Museum 
March 11, 2021 at 11:55 am |
I just thought I would say how I love getting your pieces on M L. Keep up the good work!
Best wishes
Frank Jones
Sent from my iPhone
March 11, 2021 at 1:04 pm |
Thank you, Frank. There are getting on for 3,000 blog posts now, so it’s not always easy to find new material. Blogs may need to stop during upcoming building work at the museum, but we’ll try to add new posts when we can.