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 WaterWorks, 

 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 a])plied 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 [i8th] century." 



Britton remarks in his Autobiography^ 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. 

 sQuoted in Wheatley's London Past and Present, vol. i. (Clerkenwell.) 



