ON TREE-TRUNK WATER-PIPES.
69
On Sept. 24th I saw in New Bond Street ten or twelve
lengths of tree-trunk piping, which had been brought to the
surface. Most of the pipes were from seven to eight feet long,
but two were about twelve feet. The bark was largely worn
away, and all were of elm. The longer pipes were evidently
portions of tall, straight trees, which had been without side
branches of any size, while the shorter pipes were portions of less
straight stems of more variable girth, which showed signs of
large lateral branches. Consequently the thickness of wood
enveloping the channel varied very much more in the shorter
pipes than in the longer ones. A practical difficulty in measur-
ing the diameter of a pipe-channel arises from the fact that the
tapering end of the pipe is usually much decayed, while the other
end, which looks little the worse for age, has been enlarged to
admit a portion of the tapering end of the next pipe. This, no
doubt, accounts for the statement in the Daily Chronicle that the
diameter of the channel was about 10 inches. For a pipe that
had been sawn in two showed a bore of 7 inches.
As to the antiquity of the street (through not necessarily of
the pipes), we learn from Old and New London (Vol. iv., p. 298):—
"In 1700," says Pennant, "Bond Street was built no further than the West
end of Clifford Street. New Bond Street was at that time an open field called
the Conduit Mead, from one of the conduits which supplied this part of the town
with water."
In Notes and Queries (9th series, vol. iv. 1899), there are some
notes on the word "howl" and its derivation. The "howl" in
question appears to mean "a wooden waterway under a road,"
and to be "in constant use by the Trent and the Ancholme," the
latter being a stream flowing through north Lincolnshire into the
Humber. One correspondent on this subject remarks that the
alder was the tree formerly used for wooden pipes; and that in
Lancashire the word used is owler or howler. Another ("S. Ar-
nott, Ealing," p. 132) says:—
"Howl" (p. 49 and 93). I heard this word, or its equivalent, used in Essex,
on the borders of Hainault Forest. I was accompanied by a friend observant of
such matters, and we certainly supposed it began with the letter v, as if it were
vole or voule. It was applied, as your correspondents state, to a wooden water-
way under a road."
Though, as we have seen, tree trunk water-pipes were used
in Newcastle-on-Tyne, the word howl appears in Mr. R. O.