OUR HISTORY
1565-70: The precise origins of pipe smoking in England are lost to history. However, sea captains such as Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake are believed to have brought crude clay pipes back from the New World during the 1500s, together with tobacco leaves and seeds. This sees the foundation of the artisanal craft of tobacco pipe-making in England, largely using white clay.
1580s: Sir Walter Raleigh and his friends, although not the first pipe smokers, are credited with popularising the activity amongst the gentry.
1607: The Jamestown settlement is founded in Virginia. Clay pipes are imported from England by early settlers.
1608: Robert Cotton, an artisan pipe maker whose early pipes (marked RC) have been found in London, arrives in Jamestown and begins making clay pipes. Over 1500 fragments and examples of his pipes have been found during archaeology on the site, including in a well in James Fort.
1613: Clay pipe makers are well established in London, Bristol and many other places across England: demand for pipes grows rapidly as shipments of tobacco from Virginia start arriving.
1618: Philip Foote (a Cooper) is granted a 21-year Royal Patent that gives him and a powerful group of merchants an absolute monopoly over the sale of fine white pipe clay ("ball clay"), mainly sourced from Dorset and Devon, which is essential for the production of clay pipes.
THE FIRST COMPANY AND TWO CHARTERS: 1619-1643
1619: The monopolists help to establish the Guild of Tobacco-pipe Makers of Westminster. On 5 October 1619 King James I grants the Guild a Royal Charter. All clay tobacco pipes in the country are to be made solely by the new Guild, thereby protecting the monopolists' position and suppressing rival clay pipe makers in major production hubs such as Bristol.
1634: The monopolists procure the withdrawal of the 1619 Charter and obtain a new Charter for the Guild, issued by King Charles I on 10 December. The Guild is re-incorporated as the Company of Tobacco-pipe Makers of London and Westminster and England and Wales. It becomes a City of London Company.
The pipe makers must pay the King a yearly "rent" of £100 and burn only sea-coal to make pipes. The clay monopolists fund the costs of the new Charter and bye-laws. They pay the Company £300 a year to cover the King’s rent and expenses, and another £40 a year for someone to teach its members how to make their fires from coal instead of wood. In return, the Company members contract to buy all their clay from the monopolists.
1639: The pipe clay monopoly comes to an end.
1642: The English Civil War begins, which affects trade everywhere.
Between 1643 and 1659: The Company fails to pay the King's annual rent and forfeits its Charter. It is possible the withdrawal of the pipe clay monopoly has meant the monopolists no longer provide financial support for the Company and this, together with the impact of the Civil War, the Interregnum and the rise of the Protectorate, may have resulted in its impoverishment. Much is speculation, as the Company's records are for the most part lost.
THE SECOND COMPANY AND THE THIRD CHARTER: 1663-1868
1660: With the restoration of Charles II, the Company is re-established and reorganised by the City of London.
1663: The new Company is incorporated on 29 April 1663 when King Charles II grants a third Royal Charter to the "pipe makers of London and Westminster and the Kingdom of England and the Dominion of Wales". This is the most wide-ranging Charter ever granted to a London Company, for which the King’s rent is one noble (6s 8d), payable at Christmas each year. On 2 July 1663 the Company is recognised by the Court of Aldermen as a City Company without Grant of Livery. This enforces the Charter and bye-laws throughout the City, and allows the Company to bind Apprentices who will in due course be admitted as Freemen of the City.
See second image below: The original oath taken by Apprentices to the Company.
The Company's members are generally poor; many are illiterate. Of the existing indentures dated between 1689 and 1708, 55 per cent of the Company’s Apprentices admitted to the Freedom cannot write their names, compared with around 15 per cent in other Companies. From 1689 to 1734, of the 40 per cent of indentures that give an address for a Master Freeman pipe maker, half are in the City with the largest concentration in Cripplegate, but half are outside, mostly in the County of Middlesex from Westminster to St Giles, as well as Aldgate and Whitechapel. These are the slums of London, where many Freemen are carrying on their trade away from the reach of the City authorities.
1690: A Charter for regulating tobacconists and tobacco cutters is granted to the Worshipful Company of Grocers by King William III and Queen Mary II. The Grocers' Company was responsible for "garbling" (inspecting goods to prevent adulteration).
1700s: The art of tobacco leaf blending develops as snuff-taking increases in popularity and threatens to replace pipe smoking.
1771: The Master of the Tobacco Pipe Makers, James Webb, is simultaneously Master of the Leather Sellers' Company but dies during his year in office aged 88.
1800s: By the 1800s there are no more than 200 ‘citizen’ clay pipe makers in London. Only around 100 of these are Freemen of our Company. As a result, the Company’s income - derived from membership fees (‘quarterage’) and apprenticeships - is very low.
1820s: A series of unsuccessful law suits impoverish the Company, which has to borrow £500 from a Past Master at 5 per cent per annum.
1850s: Briar pipe-making begins to evolve in Europe, following the discovery that the root burl of the white briar heath (Erica arborea), largely native to the Mediterranean basin, has excellent heat resistant properties and can be crafted into tobacco pipes. British soldiers returning home from the Crimean war bring back the habit of smoking tobacco in rolled-up tubes rather than clay pipes.
1856: An Act of Common Council allows non-Freemen to trade in the City of London, effectively cutting off the Company's income.
1860: The Tobacco Trade Benevolent Association is founded.
1868: The Company disappears from the City's registers.
Briar Pipe and Cigarette Making Develop in England
1879: French briar pipe-maker Henri Comoy migrates to England and establishes a workshop in London, introducing French briar-carving techniques to English apprentices.
1880s: Bonsack's first high speed cigarette-making machines arrive in the UK
1883: The first briar pipe factory in England is established by J Samuel Weingott in Fleet Street in 1883.
1900s: By the early 1900s, London has become the world's capital of luxury briar pipe-making using flawless briar blocks with luxury stem materials such as ebonite, vulcanite and amber, often adding hallmarked sterling silver bands.
THE THIRD COMPANY: 1954-PRESENT DAY
1954: Members of the Briar Pipe and Tobacco Trades meet to revive the Company. The new name chosen is the Worshipful Company of Tobacco Pipe Makers and Tobacco Blenders, accounting for the modern-day and wider aspects of the trade at the time, and encompassing the manufacture of tobacco pipes made from materials other than clay.
1956: A new Grant of Arms is designed by the College of Arms, retaining the first Company’s motto ‘Producat Terra’ (May the earth provide).
1957: Clay pipe maker Ivor Southorn dies in Broseley, Shropshire. Within a few years, his family have closed the doors of their famous Crown Pipe Works pipe manufactory in the town, signalling the end of commercial clay tobacco pipe production in the area after some 350 years.
1959: The Tobacco Pipe Makers' Company launches an appeal amongst its members to raise money for charity. A Benevolent Fund is established with a focus on further education.
1960: A Plea for Livery is presented to the City's Court of Aldermen and granted on 27 September.
1990: The last commercial family clay pipe maker in the country closes. Founded in 1879, Gordon Pollock's Manchester-based company is sold to Wilsons of Sharrow, snuff manufacturers. The moulds are moved to Sheffield where Wilsons continue making pipes for a few years, but soon discontinue the business.
1991: The Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust acquires the abandoned Broseley Crown Pipe Works. However the historic equipment, machinery and huge collection of clay pipe moulds inside are legally a separate asset. So the WC of Tobacco Pipe Makers & Tobacco Blenders launches an appeal to raise more than £40,000 to secure the contents before they can be split up and auctioned off separately.
Directly following the Company's fundraising efforts, the Heritage Lottery Fund approves a development grant which allowed the IGMT to complete the transformation of the factory from an endangered industrial ruin into a safe, immersive "time capsule" museum.
1995: The restored and conserved Crown Works clay pipe manufactory in Broseley opens as a museum within the Ironbridge Gorge Museums complex, a World Heritage site. It offers a wonderfully preserved time capsule of working life in this historic local industry. Also on display are the Company’s collection of tobacco paraphernalia and some fifty antique prints featuring many historic aspects of clay tobacco pipe making and pipe smoking.
2011: The Company's first woman Master, Fiona Adler, is elected as the Company's 58th Master. She is the grand-daughter of the Modern Company's first Master and the daughter of its 29th Master, and in 2014 is elected Non-Aldermanic Sheriff of the City of London.
2017: Clay pipe making is added officially to the Heritage Crafts' Red List of Endangered Crafts.
2019: The Company celebrates the 400th anniversary of the founding of the first Guild of Tobacco-pipe Makers of Westminster.
2026: The National Trust takes over the Ironbridge Gorge Museums Trust, which includes the Broseley Pipe Works. A review begins of how best to re-establish the museum as a public attraction with regular opening hours and with one of the country's last remaining clay pipe makers to demonstrate their craft.
2026: In recognition of its briar pipe-making heritage, the Company joins the Wood Group of Livery Companies.