Old Wooden Tree Pump

On Friday night I had a strange phone call quite late.

A man phoned about this blog, he'd found something he called a tree pump on his farm and tried searching for information on the Internet and came across this post.

Only one large lump of wood found this time

 He didn't live very far away (and knew my dad - although everyone round here does) and would I like to come and have a look. So on Saturday I popped by and I could see straight away that it was similar to the other one I had seen but not in as good condition, only the timber had survived and  this was only one piece.
I'd say it was older than the one I saw near Bishops Castle, not so much time had been spent on the outside of this pump or pipe as it was quite rough, just hewed square I'd guess. Also they'd picked a piece of wood that had loads of knots in it which seems an odd choice if your drilling it by hand as it would make it much harder work. That said there might have been a shortage of timber at the time and apparently there used to be monks living there so time might not have been an issue.




From what I can work out I'd say this was the base where the water was drawn from. It's set up from the bottom to prevent too much sediment getting pumped through

 As for it's usage I can only guess. There were a number of pools there where the monks would have farmed fish for eating (there wasn't many days in the week where you could eat meat compared to fish ion medieval times so freshwater fish were an important food stuff in those times). I think it was probably to pump water up to the pools if the brook feeding them ran dry.

roughly a 5" diameter hole all the way down it

This would be the top. Tapered to fit tightly into another length of pipe

A fragment of timber from it that looks like elm

The pool where it was taken from

The man who found it, Bob, was a right character and we hit it off straight away, we share a common interest in trees, wood and the countryside. He did say if the digger is around that area again then they will dig deeper to see if they can find anymore of it so maybe that would put more light on the subject.
If I ever have enough time I'd love to build a working wooden pump like this and make it the traditional way (although finding the elm might be difficult these days). I think that through building it you would learn how it works to a much greater level and what they must have done all those years ago to have water close at hand.

Old Wooden Water Pump

Hole bored right through the beam by hand

I was going to put these pictures on and ask people to guess what they were but I was so impressed when I saw it I thought I'd have to just do a post about it.

The end of one length of pipe

These are parts of an old wooden pump from a friend of my fathers' farm, pulled out from a well that must have been sealed shut for 100 years and nearly 50ft deep.

The "bucket"

The well itself is impressive but these beams are something else! I'm almost a 100% sure they're elm from what I know about the subject and they would have been felled and worked on straight away, green,  before they could develop cracks. Drilling out the centre would have removed the heart wood and the cause of most of the cracking and this would keep each piece water tight. The augers to drill it out were long (obviously) with different blades that attached on the ends, they normally started with a 2" cutter and then worked up the cutters to get a 5" hole in the finish (I didn't measure these but it looks about that).

Picture showing the length

As this well was so deep there was quite a few sections to the pump and each would have been joined with hot suet and cloth (from my research).

The well - about 50ft deep dug out by hand - These were some men!

If anyone is interested in more information on how these were made there is a great chapter in the book "The Village Carpenter" by Walter Davis (quite possibly my favourite book ever) where it is describe in some detail.

I think this is a real testament to old craftsmanship, to think there would have been wells like this all over the country up until a couple of hundred years ago is amazing, now the knowledge to create them is almost lost, only what is written in books - I wonder if one has been made in the last 50 years? With something like this the knowledge sometimes needs to be in the muscles not just the head and only if we tried to do it would we see what other techniques and tools we'd need.

A rare treat to see this, really made my day.

I'd love the opportunity to make an old wooden pump and see it work.