ON TREE-TRUNK WATER-PIPES.
63
following details about them. Tree-trunk pipes were used by the
Kent Water Company about 100 years ago in Deptford and
Greenwich, when the pumps were worked by a water-wheel at
Mill Lane, Deptford. The water was supplied at a low pressure
on the ground floors of the houses. Mr. Morris adds that old
wooden pipes have been dug up when excavations have been
made for sewers, or for new water-mains, in High Street and
other parts of old Deptford, also in London Street, Stockwell
Street and Church Street, Greenwich. He distinctly remembers
seeing old wooden pipes in the pipe yard at the Kent Water Works,
Deptford, when he was a boy; and remarks that the Kent Wate
Company sent several wooden water pipes to the "Healtheries"
Exhibition at South Kensington a few years ago.
Mr. Cole also reminded me that another member of the Essex
Field Club, Mr. J. M. Wood, C. E., of the New River Company,
might know something of these tree-trunk pipes. On writing to
Mr. Wood about them he kindly invited me to visit the Office of
the New River Company—the oldest of the London Water
Companies—and he there showed me some of the old wooden
pipes, together with many other objects of interest in connection
with the water-supply of London. The pipes seen were all of
elm; and Mr. Wood pointed out a kind of iron band which had
been driven into the pipes at the non-tapering end, between the
outer bark and the inner channel, to make the joints fit the more
tightly. He stated that wooden pipes were in use by the
London Water Companies till 1808 or 1809, when iron pipes
were introduced.
As regards the New River Company's store of wooden pipes
a century ago, the following details will be of interest. In Old
and New London, vol. 2, p. 303, are these remarks on a part of the
Clerkenwell District:—
" The Ducking-Pond Fields, Clerkenwell Fields, Spa Fields, and Pipe
Fields, were one and the same place under different names. The oldest of these
names was the first, which applied especially to the district surrounding Spa
Fields Chapel, and extending to the northward. The Pipe Fields were so
called from the wooden pipes (merely elm trees perforated) of the New River
Company, mentioned by Britton about the close of last [18th] century."
Britton remarks in his Autobiography3 that Clerkenwell, when
he first knew it in 1787, was very different from what it was in
1850. At the earlier date:—
" Spa Fields, from the south end of Rosoman Street to Pentonville, from St.
3 Quoted in Wheatley's London Past and Present, vol. I. (Clerkenwell.)