Perhaps a vessel used to wash clothes in 1868 ?

[Treetotal]

My Grandma had a Pancheon that she used for baking bread, she would prove it in the oven in the Black Range.
Carol

[garden genie]

Compare the word Puncheon which is a size of large beer barrel. I think you could get a lot of clothes in that.

[Viktoria]

Yes, my mother used the word pancheon, for a big earthenware container, used it to put the things that needed Dolly Blue ( it made white things look whiter, and was put in the starching  water, an optical illusion.)

In Shropshire it was a wooden handled sort of pan but not flat bottomed,used to scoop water from the rainwater butt.

Viktoria.

[jimbo50]

Let's face it. It could have been anything that the house used for it's washing. I presume before the time of terrifying copper sticks     Which would have been out in the yard at night because the process needed more time.

[Viktoria]

Yes,I seem to remember our pancheon had originally been my maternal grandma’s - used to prove bread dough ,they were a large family .

Why were copper sticks terrifying ?
Viktoria.

[JenB]

I have to admit that I’d never heard the word ‘pancheon’ until a few years ago, when I read the actor Tom Courtenay’s delightful book ‘Dear Tom’. In this he describes his early life in Hull, and mentions his mother making bread in a pancheon.

[morris.merryweather]

Thanks for the replies. I'll go with pancheon, although in an entry 9 years earlier he used the correct spelling for pancheon...

[Viktoria]

That looks like pancheon to me.
I wish I knew why copper sticks were terrifying!

Do you mean the wooden sticks used to  stir  and move around the clothes in the copper boiler?
Were they used for a punishment  - or just threats.?
Viktoria.

[jimbo50]

Sorry Victoria. Yes, I was threatened with the copper stick in my early years. Terrifying was perhaps a bit of an exaggeration. They were strong enough to poke down boiling sheets and bleached through use. The holder was flushed with wash day exertion which could be interpreted as fury by a teeny. I can't remember which Nan, or if it was even Mum, who might have nurtured this fear. Maybe there was an earlier use for punishment, but I certainly didn't any have fractures or bruising.