Forms and etym.: see WOOD sb.1 and YARD sb.1 A yard or inclosure in which wood is chopped, sawn, or stored, esp. for use as fuel. Also transf. (quot. 1774).
1309–10. Durham Acc. Rolls (Surtees), 7. In j securi empt. pro le Wodyard, xj d.
1537–8. Privy Purse Exp. P’cess Mary (1831), 54. Item to the Squillary, vj s. Item to the Woodyerde, vij s. vj d.
1541–2. Act 33 Hen. VIII., c. 12 § 3. The sergeant of the Woodyarde.
1627. Capt. J. Smith, Sea Gram., i. 1. To those Docks … belongs their wood-yards, with saw-pits.
a. 1700. Evelyn, Diary, 12 Sept. 1676. Over against his Majesties wood yard.
1774. Goldsm., Nat. Hist., IV. 166. Their wood-yards are larger or smaller, in proportion to the number in family; and … the usual stock of timber, for the accommodation of ten beavers, consists of about thirty feet in a square surface, and ten in depth.
1825. Longf., in Life (1891), I. v. 62. There is no wood to be had from the College woodyard.
1859. Jephson & Reeve, Brittany, 268. We begged permission of the buxom proprietress of a woodyard, to pitch our tent among her heaps of timber.
