picket-house

plural picket-houses · alternative picket house · alternative pickethouse

1. A wooden building made by fitting boards across a framework of upright poles, often constructed as part of an outpost or as the first shelter in a new homestead.

   The Metcalf picket-house and the flag-staff tower became the objects of incessant attack.

   2014, David Hume, T. Smollett, Edward Farr, E. H. Nolan, The History of England

   2 more examples

   Ever since the month of February 1810 (exactly one year), we had been constantly so near the enemy at the advanced posts, sleeping in our clothes, in bivouac, or in some hovel of a picket-house, rolled up in our cloaks on the ground, that I felt quite like a fish out of water, and was not reconciled to a bed.

   2010, Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Leach C.B., Rough Sketches Of Life Of An Old Soldier

   From the nearest French sentry, they learned that Grindley was lying drunk in their picket-house.

   2016, Gareth Glover, The American Sharpe: The Adventures of an American Officer of the 95th Rifles in the Peninsular & Waterloo Campaigns