Clay pipe

I found this last summer and bring it out of the cupboard to look at from time to time.
The remains of clay pipes can be unearthed in the gardens of older houses up and down all the country. Usually the bits remaining are the stems, showing up in short white lengths as the fork turns the soil over, thin straws of history, forerunners of both cigarettes and the throwaway society. It’s not so common to find an intact bowl but this one, embraced in a geode of dark earth, under the gooseberry bush, somehow avoided all the pressures that could have crushed its egg-shell form. It might have been last used by a miner living in my house and having a quiet smoke in the garden after a hard shift in William Pit.
It has got TW printed on its side which probably means it was made and fired by the big factory, Thomas White’s in Edinburgh and the stem hole is quite narrow, so made in the later 1800’s.  The earliest ones, with bigger holes were made from mid 1600’s. Millions were manufactured over time and despite fragility were exported all over the world. In gardens and historical sites as far away as Australia and Canada people are digging them up too. Thus, the humble clay pipe has taken on a role greater than the sum of its fragments. They are not only interesting artifacts in themselves but have become a universal method for dating other artifacts. So, put that fascinating fact into your pipe and smoke it!