Clay Tobacco Pipes and Pipemakers from the Isle of Wight
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Proc. Hampshire Field Club Archaeol. Soc. 72, 2017, 166–218 (Hampshire Studies 2017) https://doi.org/10.24202/hs2017001 CLAY TOBACCO PIPES AND PIPEMAKERS FROM THE ISLE OF WIGHT By DAVID A HIGGINS ABSTRACT century excavations at Carisbrooke Castle (Brereton 2000). The Isle of Wight is one of the few places in Britain The more recent excavations carried out where pipe clay can be found and this resource was by English Heritage at Carisbrooke Castle in exploited as a raw material and for making pipes 2006 and 2008–9 (Russell 2017, this volume) from the early seventeenth century onwards. Both produced a total of 716 fragments of clay the clay and manufactured pipes appear in shipping tobacco pipe comprising 76 bowl, 623 stem and records of goods exported but, despite this, little 17 mouthpiece fragments. This is a significant research into pipemaking on the island has been assemblage and one that ranges in date from carried out. Recent English Heritage excavations at the early seventeenth century through to the Carisbrooke Castle provided the catalyst for this study, early twentieth century. Although most of the which has examined four key groups from the Isle of pipes were recovered from disturbed deposits Wight to provide an overview of the pipes produced that do not directly relate to excavated features and the pipemakers who made them. The bowl forms on the site, they still constitute one of the largest and makers’ marks are described, illustrated and excavated groups to have been recovered from discussed, while an appendix provides detailed biog- the Isle of Wight as a whole. The recent Caris- raphies for all the pipemakers known to have worked brooke Castle finds also include a good number on the island. This study brings together the current and range of the marked and decorated pieces state of knowledge regarding pipes and pipemaking that were produced locally. These make a on the Isle of Wight and provides a reference point for useful contribution to the meagre evidence future work on the subject. available from the rest of the island, especially when combined with more complete examples of the same types recovered from elsewhere. INTRODUCTION The new finds from Carisbrooke have provided an opportunity to review the existing The Isle of Wight is one of the few places in state of knowledge regarding the pipemaking the British Isles that produced and exported industry on the island and to add to the known pipe clay, as well as having a good number of corpus of bowl forms, marks and decorative documented pipemakers who worked on the motifs that were being used there. For this study, island itself. Despite this, there has been very the excavated finds have been compared with little work on the local pipes themselves and previously published material from the castle certainly no extensive studies of the pipes and (Brereton 2000) as well as three other signifi- pipemakers such as have been prepared for cant collections from the island. The first is an Poole (Markell 1992), Christchurch (Markell unpublished group of bowls recovered from 1983), Southampton (Atkinson 1975; Higgins excavations at The Sun Inn, Holyrood Street, 2011) and the Portsmouth Harbour region Newport and now in the Isle of Wight museum (Fox & Hall 1979; Fox & Barton 1986). Rela- service store (PRN 1339). This site produced tively few pipes appear to have been collected a good collection bowls, mostly dating from from excavations and the only substantive pub- around 1660–1720, which provide complete lication is a report on pipes from the twentieth examples of local forms that complement the 166 HIGGINS: CLAY TOBACCO PIPES AND PIPEMAKERS FROM THE ISLE OF WIGHT 167 more fragmentary examples from the castle. The following sections provide an overview The second group is the previously unpublished of pipemaking on the island and set the new type series of bowl forms recovered from the finds from the castle excavations within their 1978 excavations on the site of the Lord Louis wider context. Library in Orchard Street, Newport (Museum Service; PRN 1543). This was the site of the principal pipe factory on the island from at least GEOLOGICAL BACKGROUND the early nineteenth century onwards and the products of three successive makers are repre- The Isle of Wight is one of the few places in sented (and a fourth is known from pipes found the country where good quality pipe clay can elsewhere). Most of the pipes produced during be found. This clay is terrestrial in origin, this period were marked and decorated and dating from the early tertiary period when it once again, many of these finds provide more formed as outwash from weathering of granites complete examples of fragmentary specimens in the south-west peninsular. The deposits recovered from the castle excavations. Finally, found on the Isle of Wight are part of the same the author has in his possession a reference col- formation as those found in the Poole Harbour lection that was built up over a number of years basin. They occur as a thin band in what is by a private individual on the island. The pipes now known as the Bracklesham Group of the in this collection date from the seventeenth Poole formation (formerly the Bagshot Beds). century onwards and include a wide range of This clay outcrops next to the sands at Alum local types. Although now individually unprov- Bay at the west of the island, where it occurs enanced, the collection was assembled from a as near vertical beds. These could have been number of local sources including kiln waste worked from the beach or followed inland and from the Orchard Street factory in Newport, extracted by mining. It certainly seems to be a finds from the Medina River near Cowes (par- mine that is depicted in a 1798 engraving of a ticularly the earlier pipes, and almost certainly pipe clay pit at Bonchurch by I. Hassell (British a pipe marked IOHN STEPHENS with an intact Library: K Top Vol 15, 19.d), since it appears bowl) and late material from a bottle dump that the clay is being hauled out of a shaft on at Newport. The local marked and decorated a rope. forms in this collection often provide better The geological memoir also notes quarrying examples of fragmentary specimens from the at a site about half a mile ESE of East Aston castle excavations. (near Freshwater). Most pipeclays are thought Having compared the newly excavated to occur in the west and south-west corner of pipes with this study material it was evident the island, although the 1798 engraving shows that the finds from the island included a extraction at Bonchurch and Venables (1860, wide range of bowl forms and styles, with a 66) says that “there is a pipe factory, supplied from significant number of marked and decorated a vein of pipe-clay at Down End, above Arreton” pieces amongst them. These proved hard (the pipe factory mentioned was probably that to identify or parallel for two reasons. First, in Newport, not at Down End itself). Later in the only published list of pipemakers for the same book Venables notes (p351) that, “the the island is mixed amongst the Hampshire beds of Pipe-clay are not much used, it being entries published by Oswald in 1975, and found difficult to work them cleanly, owing to these entries are very brief and now rather out the narrowness of the veins and the tendency of of date. Second, there are very few published the surrounding cliffs to founder.” This appears examples of bowl forms, marks or decorated to be a more general statement about pipe-clay pipes from the island to use for reference. In from the island, especially since he has earlier order to address these problems, a new list of (p305) referred to the thin vein of pipe-clay at pipemakers has been prepared (Appendix Alum Bay. 1), and a corpus of bowl forms compiled to Although the deposits of pipeclay were not as illustrate the evolution of pipe styles, marks extensive or deep as those found in south Devon and decoration on the island (Figs 1–12). and Dorset, they would still have provided an 168 HAMPSHIRE FIELD CLUB AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY important resource. As early as 1619 there were previous publications and easily accessible leases controlling the extraction of pipeclay in Internet sources (Appendix 1). It has not been the Poole area (Cooksey 1980, 337) and the clay possible to look at original archives as part was in demand for a number of other industrial of this study and so there will doubtless be a uses, quite apart from making pipes. In 1662 lot more information that can be added, par- Fuller, writing of tobacco pipe clay in Dorset ticularly for the seventeenth and eighteenth (p277), says that, “This is a fine clay, which will centuries. Despite this, the new list does at least burn white (while others turn red) found in provide a framework against which the pipe several parts of England; but so far from the finds can be compared and identified. sea, it will not quit cost of portage to London, The earliest recorded maker is Thomas save from two places, 1. Poole, in this county. Strange, who married at Newport in 1654, This wrought alone makes an hard pipe, but where he was presumably working. This shows so shrunk and shrivelled, it is unhandsome to that pipe making was already taking place on the eye. 2. Isle of Wight. This wrought alone, the island by the middle of the seventeenth makes a fair and full pipe, but so brittle, that it is century (and was on a large enough scale uncerviceable [sic] for use.