1922.1 The Beginnings of Field Drainage. 589 



While the moie plough was slowly evolving, inventors were 

 experimenting with bolid conduits which would replace the old 

 stone and brushwood drains, and at the same time mechanical 

 methods of cutting trenches were here and there introduced. 

 Although the earthenware pipe was known in the seventeenth 

 centur}' it was used for conveying water supplies and not con- 

 sidered for a long time as a means of draining land.* Channels 

 made of brick w^ere in use, as we have seen, about the year 

 1700, and these in turn suggested bricks with a semi-circular 

 cavity which might rest on the earth or on flat bricks or might 

 be placed face to face to form a circular tube.! A brick arch 

 a foot wide and an inch thick, in shape like a ridge tile, was 

 used in Shropshire, + and there was a great variety of specially 

 shaped bricks w^hich, singly or in conjunction, would form 

 conduits of divers geometrical forms. § Circular earthenware 

 pipes, how^ever, were employed in Essex and elsewhere before 

 the end of the eighteenth century, and although other shapes 

 have from time to time been employed!! (even so late as 1843 

 the Eoyal iVgricultural Society awarded Silver Medals for oval, 

 horseshoe and angular tiles)f: ; the circular pattern was finally 

 generally recognised as cheapest and most effective. 



x\s an alternative to cutting drainage trenches by hand, 

 heavy ploughs w^ere employed in the eighteenth and early 

 nineteenth centuries : teams of eight, tw^elve and even twenty 

 horses are mentioned.** The general principle embodied in 

 these plougiis was to set two coulters parallel at whatever 

 width it was desired to make the trench, and to clear the 

 spoil by two long mould boards, the share, of course, making 

 a level sole. Trenches could be cut a foot deep and eighteen 

 to twenty inches wide at the surface. Grey's draining plough 

 was fitted with tw-o land w^heels to run on either side of the 

 drain and to regulate the depth of the cut : this plough was 

 fitted in addition with a centre coulter to loosen the earth. ft 

 The Royal Society of Arts awarded premiums for ploughs of 



* Patent Specification No. 11 : John Etherington's Patent (1611') ; R. 

 Bradley, Weelcly Miscellany for the Improvement of Husbandry^ No. 8 (1727). 

 f Johnstone, Account of Elhington's System, p. 15'J. 

 t County Reports, Shropshire^ p. 17. 



^ Lawson, Farmer's Practical Instructor (1826), p. 535, Fiir. vii. 

 j| Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, N.S. (1847-41>), p. 372. aiul (ls!41'-51) 

 p. 563 ; R.A.S.E. Journal, iv, 369 f; v, 273. 

 ^ Ihid., iv, 371. 



** Bradh'V, Complete Body of Husbandry (1727), pp. 33/ ; Ellis, Chiltern 

 and Vale Farming (1733), p. 326; Report.i of IL <f C. Select Connn ittee {1S36),. 

 iii, 7. 



ff Lawson, Farmers Practical Instructor, pp. 97/. 



