72 ON TREE-TRUNK WATER-PIPES. 



Wicken Bonant, near Saffron Walden, in 1869. In each case 

 the mischief was clearly shown to be traceable to a water 

 supply from shallow wells in the gravel on which the houses 

 stood. At Terling some water was also obtained from the Ter 

 where it flowed through the village ; and at Page Green Water- 

 works supplied some of the houses. But the shallow-well water 

 was evidently the most popular at Page Green, and we are told 

 that the inhabitants were surprised to find that it was supposed 

 to have anything injurious in it, " and amused at its being 

 analysed." This popular preference for shallow-well water to 

 that from waterworks, in a London suburb, in the year 1865, 

 enables us to realise the still stronger feelings of the same kind 

 which must have prevailed in rural districts up to that time, 

 and have tended to prevent any considerable use of wooden 

 water-pipes in small country towns after their disuse in London 

 and other great centres of population. 



Essex is a county in which we might expect to find a special 

 abundance of survivals of old wooden appliances of all kinds. It 

 is one of the most uniformly well-wooded of districts, has many 

 wooden village spires, abounds with wooden houses, and has (as 

 Matthew Arnold notes in his Letters) an " ancient " look 

 generally. Finding that Chelmsford, though on a gravelly site, 

 was in 1771 using pipes to convey water from the Burgess Well 

 to the Conduit in the Market Place, I wrote to Mr. F. 

 Chancellor, F.R.I.B.A., &c., asking him if they were, or, so far 

 as he knew, ever had been, of wood. However, he was good 

 enough to inform me that as the supply came from a spring only 

 650 yards away, the pipe was of lead. He was well aware of 

 the former use of tree-trunk pipes, and remembered seeing many 

 disinterred some years ago in Bishopsgate Street, when a new 

 iron main was being laid ; at the time when the Great Eastern 

 Terminus was at Shoreditch. But, as regards Essex, Mr. 

 Chancellor replied : — " I never remember seeing anything of the 

 kind in the county ; the nearest approach to it is the old Tree- 

 Pump, which used to be very common in this county, and 1 

 daresay there may be one or two left." 



Though, from one point of view, tree-pumps and tree-pipes 

 are things which might naturally be expected to flourish together 

 m the same district, from another they tend rather to be mutually 

 exclusive. For where the water supply of town or village is 



