Water
713
were hollow tree trunks. Since Roman pipes had all been lead, nobody yet
suspected that lead was poisonous.
Bringing water from afar was not a simple task. The water had to fl ow
steadily downhill, since gravity was the only engine for water fl ow. When
a stream or spring at a higher elevation had been located, it was often on
someone else’s land, and the proposed conduit would cross many lands.
These conduits could have been entirely in rural land, or they could have
crossed under a town wall, under streets, and into the friary or abbey. Mon-
asteries had to get permission or buy the strips of land they needed to dig.
In order to maintain the conduit’s steady downhill gradient, ditches to
bury pipe varied from a few inches to 24 feet. The ditches had to be lined
with stone or clay and the pipes carefully joined with molten lead, tow, or
iron collars. When conduits came to other ditches, creeks, or roads, they
had to go over or under; some pipes ran along bridges.
When the pipeline came to the monastery, there was sometimes a series
of settling tanks to allow dirt in the water to settle before the water was
ready for drinking. The water system brought supplies into many of the
buildings. If the pipes were narrow and watertight, there was often enough
water pressure to feed a fountain. Fountains were the preferred water dis-
tribution method in the Middle Ages. They looked and sounded beautiful
and peaceful, and they made water available to many people at once. A mo-
nastic lavatory station could be a water fountain with a dozen spouts so that
many monks could wash at the same time. Other fountains were set up for
fi lling jugs by dipping them into the reservoir.
The reservoir of the fountain drained into pipes that carried the water
away to other buildings and rooms. Monasteries without fountains had cis-
terns and reservoirs fi lled by the pipes that formed an underground river.
Pipes went to the dormitories, the kitchen, the workshops, and the wash-
ing stations. Washbasins, called lavers, were made of stone, bronze, or lead.
The water came into laver stands through pipes with copper taps on the
end, which were sometimes shaped like animals’ heads. The water could be
turned on and off by a stopcock faucet in a circular socket. Water fl owed if
the hole in the stopper aligned with the hole in the pipe but was stopped if
the stopper was turned so the holes did not align.
Secular Water Systems
In rural places, springs, wells, and rivers supplied water. Medieval wells
were nothing more than holes dug down to the water table. Later wells
had walls around them, roofs, and windlasses to pull buckets up. In the
Middle Ages, most did not, and many accidents occurred. Older children
and women were the most common water carriers. They could lose their
footing at the well’s edge and fall in, and many drowned. By late medieval