Forms: 8 steerling, stirling, 8–9 sterling, 7– starling. [Possibly a corruption of STADDLING.] An outwork of piles, projecting in front of the lower part of the pier of a bridge, so as to form a protection for the pier against the force of the stream or to secure it from damage by the impact of vessels or floating objects.
c. 1684. Old Ballads Gt. Frost (Percy Soc.), 29. And on the starlings [was] kept the brandy trade.
1714. J. Macky, Journ. Eng., I. xiii. (1722), 292. Arches … fenced with large Sterlings for the keeping off the Force of the Tide.
1724. De Foe, Tour Gt. Brit., I. III. 124. The Islands of Scilly … are plac’d like Outworks to resist the first Assaults of this Enemy [the ocean] … as the Piles or Starlings (as they are call’d) are plac’d before the solid Stone-work of London-bridge, to fence off the Force, either of the Water or Ice, or [etc.].
1739. Labelye, Short Acc. Piers Westm. Bridge, 42. There must be … a necessity of building Steerlings to preserve the Piers.
1773. Noorthouck, New Hist. London, 561. The passage under the arches [of old London Bridge] was contracted by enormous platforms, built round the decaying piers, called sterlings.
1776. G. Semple, Building in Water, 49. We laid three Beams stretching the whole Length of the Pier from Sterling to Sterling.
1778. H. Bowman, Trav., 337. The stream still more streightened by starlings filled with large stones placed round the bottoms of the peers.
1840. Civil Engin. & Arch. Jrnl., III. 106/2. Piers and … ponts or chests … made salient at each end like the starlings of a bridge.
1878. Stevenson, Inland Voy., 17. They perched upon sterlings and buttresses.
1879. Cassell’s Techn. Educ., IV. 405. The starling is that portion of the pier which faces the direction of the stream, and acts like the cutwater of a ship.
