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 tobacco, seeds and crude clay pipes back to England from the New World during the 1500s.
1580s: Sir Walter Raleigh and his friends, although not the first pipe smokers, are credited with popularising the activity amongst the gentry.
1604: King James I publishes the anonymous pamphlet, A Counterblaste to Tobacco and issues a Royal Decree imposing massive tax increases on the product.
1613: Huge quantities of tobacco pour into England from colonial Virginia and Maryland. More than 7,000 ‘tobagies’ are selling tobacco. Clay pipe makers are becoming well established in London, Bristol and elsewhere.
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, 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 1634. 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, and 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.
See second image below: The original oath taken by apprentices to the Company.
1639: The clay pipe monopoly comes to an end.
1642: The English Civil War begins, which affects trade everywhere.
1643 to 1663: The Company fails to pay the King's annual rent and forfeits its Charter at some point between 1642 and 1663. It is possible the withdrawal of the clay pipe monopoly has meant the monopolists no longer provide financial support for the Company and this, together with the impact of the Civil War, impoverishes the Company. 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 begins to be 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.
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 of the Freemen are carrying on their trade.
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.
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.
1856: Act of Common Council allows non-Freemen to trade in the City of London, effectively cutting off the Company's income.
1868: The Company disappears from the City's registers.
THE THIRD COMPANY: 1954-PRESENT DAY
1954: Key members of the Briar Pipe and Tobacco Trades meet to revive the old Company. The name is changed to the Worshipful Company of Tobacco Pipe Makers and Tobacco Blenders, accounting for the modern-day and wider aspects of the trade, and encompassing the manufacture of tobacco pipes made from materials other than clay.
1956: New Grant of Arms is designed by the College of Arms, retaining the original Company’s motto ‘Producat Terra’ (May the earth provide).
1957: The Southorn family closes the doors of the Crown Works pipe manufactory at Broseley in Shropshire after 350 years, signalling the end of large-scale commercial clay tobacco pipe production in the UK.
1959: Members launch an appeal 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.
1990s: The Company raises more than £40,000 to purchase the contents of the abandoned Broseley Pipe Works which were left in situ when it closed.
1995: The fully-restored clay pipe manufactory 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 the tobacco trade and clay tobacco pipe making.