586 The Beginnings of Field Drainage. [Oct., 



At the end of the Middle Ages, Fitzherbert, who in this a& 

 in all other points describes mediaeval practice, directs that if 

 open drains " wylle not make the marres groimde drie, then 

 you must make a soughe undernethe the erthe, as men do to 

 get cole, yron, stone, leade or tynne."* This suggests that 

 there had been a departure from the classical practice of cutting 

 a channel and filling first with stones or brushwood and then 

 with soil; and the method recommended by Fitzherbert was, 

 there can be little doubt, that still practised in the seventeenth 

 century in Staffordshire. " Mr. Sylvester, of Welford," we 

 are told, "first digs a hole deep and large anough to receive 

 a Man together with his instrument like a shovel, then he exca- 

 vates the hollow hlacJc earth as far as his instrument will reach 

 both ways, i.e., about eight foot beside the diameter of the hole, 

 leaving the upper turf thick above it ; then at the same distance 

 on a lijie from eight foot to eight foot, he makes other holes, 

 and so still on as the work requires, and then putting in Alders 

 . ... or other fit materials, as hrush-icood to keep the earth 

 from falling in and choaking the Sough, it will drain the ground 

 to that rate, that many times it will sink a yard or more."f 



The classical practice was, however, that commonly followed 

 in the seventeenth century. Walter Blith advocated drains three 

 to four feet deep, filled first with faggots of willow, alder or lime, 

 covered bv turf and then with fifteen inches of stones, soil being 

 placed on top :t this combines the two methods described by 

 Palladius and other classical writers. There were other varia- 

 tions in detail: in Oxfordshire, for example, an "ingenious 

 Husbandman, that having dug his trenches about a yard deep and 

 two foot over, first laid at the bottom green Black-thorn bushes, 

 and on them a stratum of large round stones, or at least such as 

 would not lie close ; and over them again, another stratum of 

 Black-thorn, and upon them straw to keep the dirt from falling in 

 between, and filling them up : bv which means he kept his trench 

 open, and procured so constant and durable a drain, that the 

 land is since sunk a foot or eighteen inches, and become firm 

 enough to support carriages/'^, 



At the beginning of the eighteenth century there are notices 

 of hollow brick drains as a substitute for drains of a classical 

 model. A trench was cut and the bottom covered with bricks 

 laid crosswise, other bricks being laid lengthwise at the sides 



* BoJce of Surveyinge, c. xxxiv. 



t Robert Plot, Natural History of Stafford shire (1686), p. 356. 



j: English Improver (1649), pp. 23, 24. 



§ Plot, Natural History of Oxfordshire (1676), p. 249. 



