70 ON TREE-TRUNK WATER-PIPES. 



Heslop's Northumhevland Wovds^' simply as meaning empty. But 

 whatever may be the local variations in spelling, it is interesting 

 to find the thing indicated in use alike in Lancashire, Lincoln- 

 shire, and Essex. 



We have seen that iron main pipes began to supersede 

 wooden ones in the London district about the years 1808 and 

 I Bog. But, except possibly in the iron-producing districts, it is 

 highly improbable that this was commonly the case in our towns 

 befo!e the general diffusion of railways. London, of course, 

 always had the advantage of being a great port, and navigable 

 rivers and canals may often have afforded a means of transit for 

 iron pipes a century ago, from manufacturing to agricultural 

 districts. But many large areas would then be far removed 

 from water communications, which would allow of the importa- 

 tion of iron pipes at a paying price. And the popular prejudice 

 against their introduction would be probably stronger in rural 

 districts than (as we have seen) it was in London. 



Another set of circumstances, however, materially reduces 

 our chances of finding evidence of the use of tree-trunk pipes in 

 our smaller towns after they had fallen into disuse in London, 

 Hull, and Newcastle-on-Tyne. For in the first half of the nine- 

 teenth century the great majority of the smaller towns were 

 content to obtain their water supply from the sandy or gravelly 

 sites on which they stood, by means of pumps or shallow wells. 

 Consequently when the spread of cholera and other diseases 

 revealed the danger of using this water, and a more deeply-seated 

 or distant supply was obtained, the pipes distributing it would 

 naturally be of iron. For by that period the former use of 

 wooden pipes would be recalled only by a few of the older 

 inhabitants as a vague tradition of the olden time ; no actual 

 instance of their employment being known in the immediate 

 neighbourhood. 



In illustration of the fact that our older towns and villages 

 are usually to be found on sandy or gravelly soils, so as to obtain 

 their water supply from pumps or shallow wells, and thus be 

 beyond the need for water pipes of any kind, let us consider the 

 district occupied by the so-called " Hastings Beds " of Kent and 

 Sussex, where the clayey and sandy beds occupy nearly equal 

 areas of the surface. Topley, in his Geological Survey Memoir 



sPublished for English Dialect Society, Lond., Keegan, Paul and Co., 1S92. 



