Old lead pumps are now very seldom to be found. One remains at Wick, Christchurch, which is 6 inches in diameter, and is decorated by a crest--a boar’s head in a wreath--and the initials “G. B.” as well as the signature “J. JENKINS, Plummer, 1797.”
In England the gutters of important churches were generally formed behind the stone parapet, but at Lincoln the whole is formed of lead above a carved stone cornice. It is about two feet high and the outside is decorated with foiled circles closer or farther apart with due disregard for precision. In France gutters were often like this made on the top of the stone cornice; irons turned up carry a continuous rod, over which the lead was dressed, and as the outlets were frequent little fall was required.[31]
[Illustration: FIG. 65.--Gutter, Lincoln Cathedral.]
To some bay windows of a fine old timber house at Derby there are little parapets formed out of lead, the front edge being cut into notches like a tiny battlement, and short lengths of pipe form spouts for the water. At Taunton there is a bay window with a similar battlement of lead; this is cast with a running pattern and wavy upper edge, to this below is soldered a similar strip reversed making a fringe; the same pattern forms the isolated gutters at Poundisford House above mentioned. At Montacute the spouting has a series of little upright panels, the top moulding breaking up higher over every alternate pair in crenelations, leaving a space filled with a boss. At Bramhall there is a cottage to which both the spouting and the down pipe have a running scroll of flowery ornament. Sometimes the end of a roof gutter between two gables is stopped by an apron of lead with pattern on it, such as a knot of cord and initials.
[Illustration: FIG. 66.--Gutter, Taunton.]
The water was discharged from the gutters into the heads of down pipes, or sometimes from jutting lengths of spout supported by iron props, the nozzles cut into a form often simulating an animal’s jaws.
The down pipes are particularly English, nowhere else can the ornate constructions of lead forming the pipe heads of Haddon and other great houses of the sixteenth century be matched. According to Viollet-le-Duc, here in England this arrangement was already in use in the fourteenth century, when nowhere except in England were these lead pipes from the roof down to the base of the wall known. He also remarks on the advantage of these being square as they can expand if required when the water freezes, while a circular pipe can only burst.[32] Fragments of pierced work in Gothic patterns which formed parts of pipe heads have been found at Fountains Abbey.