Читать книгу A Book of Britain: The Lore, Landscape and Heritage of a Treasured Countryside - Johnny Scott - Страница 35

Alder, often seen lining the banks of streams and rivers or forming small alder woods known as ‘carrs’ on damp ground, was an immensely useful, fast-growing, multi-purpose tree. The tightly grained wood has the quality of long endurance under both fresh and sea water, and was invaluable for pumps, troughs, sluices and water pipes. The medieval conduits bringing fresh water into London were made using alder and it was still used for piping in the eighteenth century. In fact, examples of alder water pipes from the reign of Charles II, excavated from Oxford Street in 1899, can be seen at the Powerhouse Museum in London’s Chinatown.

Alder was extensively used as piling in the construction of docks, quays and landing stages – Venice was built on alder piles, and during the great era of canal building in the eighteenth century all lock gates were made of alder. It was much sought-after for lightweight, durable clogs worn by workers in the mill towns of Lancashire and the south of Scotland, and was used for cart and spinning wheels, bowls, spoons, wooden heels for shoes, herring-barrel staves and furniture.

Alder wood burns with an intense heat and so made the best charcoal for gunpowder manufacturing. Gunpowder factories were usually sited where there was a natural supply of alder trees; the Royal Gunpowder Mill, established in 1560 at Waltham Abbey in Essex, is an example of this, or the 1694 Chart Gunpowder Mill at Faversham in Kent. The bark was used for tanning, waterproofing fishermen’s nets, curing sore throats and to make a reddish dye. Alder shoots, which appear in early spring, produce a brown dye, the catkins a green one, and in some rural areas the leaves, which have a clammy, glutinous surface, were strewn on the floor in rooms to catch fleas, from Neolithic times until well into the eighteenth century.