ˈwheel-house
Also wheel house, wheelhouse.
1. A structure enclosing a large wheel, e.g. a water-wheel; spec. a house or superstructure containing the steering-wheel, a pilot-house; also, the paddle-box of a steam-boat.
| 1835 J. H. Ingraham South-West I. xxiii. 247 The pilot (as the helms-man is here called) stands in his lonely wheel-house. 1846 A. Hawkins Let. 20 Nov. in N. E. Eliason Tarheel Talk (1956) 304 The carpenter in coming out of the wheel house whare he had been mending the wheel dropd the candle on some loose cotton. 1850 B. Taylor Eldorado i. (1862) 3 On the morning of July 5th, I took a station on the wheel-house. 1883 Gresley Gloss. Coal-Mining 285. 1892 J. S. Fletcher When Chas. I was King (1896) 26 The mill at Wentbridge, where the stream was pouring through the wheel-house like a cataract. 1906 ‘Mark Twain’ Autobiogr. I. 310 Rush..astern to the solitary lifeboat lashed aft the wheelhouse on the port side. 1976 Southern Even. Echo (Southampton) 2 Nov. 20/1 On the roof of the main building is a full size replica of a ship's wheelhouse which is used for training. |
2. a. A building in which cart-wheels are stored.
| 1813 Vancouver Agric. Devon 472 The wheel-house under the barn, 25 feet square. |
b. = round-house n. 3 a.
| 1971 [see round-house n. 3 a]. |
3. Archæol. A circular stone dwelling of the late Iron Age of a type widespread in northern and western Scotland, having partition walls radiating from the centre. Cf. wheel-dwelling, -hut s.v. wheel n. 19.
| 1935 V. G. Childe Prehist. Scotland x. 217 A wheel⁓house is in essence a walled area roughly circular or oval..divided up into a number of voussoir-shaped rooms or compartments by radial walls arranged like the spokes of a wheel. 1957 T. C. Lethbridge Gogmagog viii. 149 A considerable mass of pottery of what must be considered Iron Age culture, though of Roman date, has now been recovered from brochs and wheel-houses in the Hebrides. 1970 Bray & Trump Dict. Archaeol. 254/2 Wheelhouses survived well into the Roman period as dwellings and farmhouses. |