ON TREE-TRUNK WATER-PIPES. 65
many other wooden pipes long after they would otherwise have
become useless. Buckland adds in a note :—
" I learn that the fashion of pollarding, or cutting off the branches of elm trees
in the neighbourhood to make them grow tall and straight, arose from the former
demand for their stems, cut into lengths, and bored throughout to make pipes to
conduct water. I have frequently seen these in the London streets when the
workmen have been making excavations for repairs."
[Mr. J. M. Wood has presented a fine specimen of a wooden
water-main, formerly employed by the New River Company, to
the Epping Forest Museum, a drawing of which is given (Fig. 2).
It is an elm trunk 9ft. 7m. in length, 6ft. in circumference at the
larger, and 2ft. 3m. at the smaller end. The trunk has been
tapered at one foot from the end, and the diameter at that end
is 7 inches; at the larger end 10 inches; so that two similar pipes
could be easily fitted together. At the larger end an iron ring
FIG. 2.—WATER-PIPE MADE FROM AN ELM TRUNK.
New River Company.
Now in Epping Forest Museum.
has been inserted in the wood, so as to prevent splitting when
another pipe was wedged in. The bore is very straight, and
very perfectly circular in section, making allowances for the
natural decay of the wood. It is a matter of curious conjecture
how such long and perfect "bores" in a solid tree-trunk could
have been made. We have been assured by an engineer that
even now, with the aid of steam power, such drilling would be
difficult, and in pre-steam days much more so. At present we
have no information on this point—Ed.]
Tree-trunk pipes, being both ancient and modern appliances,
when seen, being exposed by accident, not by design, and being
invisible, when in use, have attracted scarcely any attention
from archaeologists. I found, however, in the Journal of the
British Archaeological Association for 1873 (Vol. 29, pp. 184-186)
E