Flow of History

So they drained it long and crossways in the lavish Roman style--
Still we find among the river-drift their flakes of ancient tile,
And in drouthy middle August, when the bones of meadows show,
We can trace the lines they followed sixteen hundred years ago.

From 'The Land' by R Kipling

Kipling was a man of his time: imperialist, racist, elitist, jingoist, and immensely popular. The full text of this poem exposes his patronising attitude towards those he considered socially inferior. He affects to believe that those who work and understand the land are its true "owners", but the undertone of the narrative is security in the belief that the rich man in his castle and the poor man at the gate is the way things should, and always will, be. Nevertheless, he was a gifted writer, and this poem tells a gripping story - albeit cod history - that has stuck in my mind for fifty years

In not sure about his grip on the detail of history either. The Romans used tiles to move water in domestic situations and for irrigation but, as far as I know, where they drained land, they did so by digging trenches and filling them with stone or wood - a method that continued at least up to the 18th century

It's not clear when someone had the idea of placing a (originally flat) tile across the bottom of the trench to create a clear channel for the water. Subsequently two tiles were used, in an upside down 'V' and eventually this was replaced by a single 'U' shaped tile like this - the 'horseshoe drain'. These were created by bending a flat tile around a pole before drying and firing. It was not until someone invented a machine for extruding clay in the 19th century that fully enclosed tiles could be made

The top of these tiles has the word 'DRAIN' fired into the clay, along with the date 1832. In 1784 a tax was imposed on clay building materials, including all tiles. Eventually, in 1826, drainage tiles were exempted, so the word 'drain' was stamped on them as a condition of exemption. The tax was abolished in 1850

How these two came to be in our daughter's garden is unknown. The house was previously rented and bought from an absentee owner. These were in the garden and unremarked upon. It is just possible that they were dug up when the ground works for the property were executed, in the early 20th century, and have been here ever since. That's the version of history I like, anyway