Winter Dyke or winterdyke or winter-dyke [1] [2] is a Scots word for a clothes horse used in drying clothing indoors. The word "dyke" means a wall or a fence made without mortar that was occasionally used for hanging laundry in the summer months.
The phrase winter dyke originally hails from the Ferguslie Park area of Scotland as a replacement for a back door drying area in the winter months.