[Etymology unknown.
The term has been plausibly conjectured to be Du. or Flem. with second element = schot ‘boarding,’ as in wainscot; *kant-schot would be ‘side-boarding’; but no trace of this or any similar compound is found in these langs. The thing is well known there, and called schoeiing i.e., ‘shoeing.’]
A facing of piles and boarding along the bank of a river, or at the side of an embankment, to protect the bank from the action of the current, or to resist the out-thrust of the embankment.
1691. T. H[ale], Acc. New Invent., p. lxxi. Surveyors assured me that under St. Magnus Church they after the Fire met with an old Campshot and Wharfing, gain’d from the Thames, and … that there were found Campshots much further from the Thames in digging of Cellars.
1867. F. Francis, Angling, i. (1880), 61, note. ‘The campshot,’ as it is termed on the Thames, is the wooden-boarding and piling that keeps up the bank of the river.
