Drainer?

[Delphinum]

What would a drainer do?  Has anyone heard of this occupation before?   

[behindthefrogs]

The occupation look ups all say

"a person who made drains"

[Delphinum]

LOL Sounds... erm... lovely!        Thanks for that!  I was kind of thinking it may be along the lines of a sewage works person, but making the pipes sounds alot cleaner!   

[behindthefrogs]

I am not sure quite what it means which is why I quoted verbatim. 

He may have made drains in a field to drain it or as you say actually manufactured them.  Hopefully someone will find a fuller definition.

[Delphinum]

Good open field air never hurt anyone... and would make more sense to be honest... Alot of the family were farm labourers and dry-stane dykers (as we say - i.e. built the walls), so that would probably fit in!
Thanks again, you've been a great help!

[Burrow Digger]

I have an ancestor who was a land drainer in Cornwall during the 1860s through 1890s. Does anyone know exactly what a land drainer would do? I mean he obviously drains land  - but what sort of land and why?

Burrow Digger

[behindthefrogs]

Land is either drained because it is too wet for cultivation or because it is marsh land being brought into cultivation.

The process is to lay a herring bone of clay pipes about ten cms in diameter and 30 cms long end to end leaving a 1cm gap between them.  These will be layed at about 30 cms below ploughing depth and run down hill into a ditch.

My garden still contains the remains of one of these drainage systems

[kmo]

A drainer would have been a labourer who dug the trenches to lay  pipes made of fired clay. The first clay drain pipes were horse shoe shaped and the open side  was put at the bottom on a flat stone. Then later cylindrical ones were made.
We had a field that had been drained by tying  three straight branches into a bundle and burying successions end to end. The water would run down the gap in the centre.