NOTES ON ANCIENT WATER-PIPES. II7 



of whicli I found three last year, being an addition to the 

 list of Essex mollusca. Though I had dredged over the same 

 ground for many years, not a single specimen had ever been 

 found previously. Last year I collected for the first time in the 

 River Colne a number of the beautiful blue Medusa, Cyanea 

 lamavchii. 



NOTES ON ANCIENT WATER-PIPES. 



By A. MORLEY DAVIES, B.Sc, F.G.S. 



THE following notes are offered as a supplement to Mr. 

 T. V. Holmes's interesting article on "Tree- Trunk Water 

 Pipes" {ante pp. 60-75). 



I thmk it will be found that there w^as no extensive use of elm- 

 wood pipes in or about London before the time of the New 

 Kiver. All references to water-pipes during the middle ages 

 that I have seen refer to them as of lead. The earliest known 

 plan of a system of water-pipes is probably that of the Monastery 

 of Christ Church in Canterbury, which dates from before 11 67. 

 It is preserved at Trinity College, Cambridge, and reproduced in 

 Willis's Architectural History of the Converdual Buildings of the 

 Monastery of Christ Church in Canterbury, In a record quoted 

 in that work the water is said to be brought from the distance of 

 a league outside the city " tut suz terre par pypes de plum." 



These leaden pipes were doubtless made in the same way as 

 those found at Pompeii, which are pear-shaped in cross section, 

 and made from sheet lead folded together (Mau's Pompeii : Its Life 

 and Art.y 



Leaden pipes seem to have been used for the early conduit 

 pipes in London from 1236 on. The accounts of the Keepers 

 of the Conduit in 1350 include 8 marks and 12 pence for one 

 *'fozer" (about a ton) of lead, but there is nothing about wood 

 (Riley's Memorials, p. 265.) When extensive works were about 

 to be undertaken by the Corporation in 1443, the Royal Charter 

 granting them the necessary rights allowed them to " comman- 

 deer" 200 foudras plumbi. (Rymer's Foedera, vol. xi. p. 33.) 



John Norden in his Surveyor's Dialogue (1607) describes 

 an imaginary survey of a manor, which is of great value as a 

 picture of country life at the time. When the Surveyor is 

 approaching the manor-house, he remarks : — 



iSee note on the invention of metliod of casting pipes of lead, ante p. 75. — Ed. 



