CLAY TOBACCO-PIPES.
(Vol. ix., p. 372.)
I was much pleased at reading Mr. H. T. Riley's Note on this neglected subject, in which I take no small interest, and feel happy in communicating the little amount of information I possess regarding it. I have long thought that the habit of smoking, I do not say tobacco, but some other herb, is of much greater antiquity than is generally supposed. Tobacco appears to have been introduced amongst us about 1586 by Captain R. Greenfield and Sir Francis Drake (vide Brand's Popular Antiquities); but I have seen pipe-bowls of English manufacture, which had been found beneath the encaustic pavement of Buildwas Abbey in Shropshire, which gives a much earlier date to the practice of smoking something. I remember an old man, a perfect Dominie Sampson in his way, who had been in turn gaoler, pedagogue, and postmaster, at St. Briavel's, near Tintern Abbey, habitually smoking the leaves of coltsfoot, which he cultivated on purpose; he told me that he could seldom afford to use tobacco. The pipes found in such abundance in the bed of the Thames, and everywhere in and about London, I believe to be of Dutch manufacture; they are identical with those which Teniers and Ostade put into the mouths of their boors, and have for the most part a small pointed heel, a well-defined milled ring around the lip, and bear no mark or name of the maker. Such were the pipes used by the soldiers of the Parliament, to be found wherever they encamped. I will only instance Barton, near Abingdon, on the property of G. Bowyer, Esq., M.P., where I have seen scores while shooting in the fields around the ruins of the old fortified mansion. The English pipes, on the contrary, have a very broad and flat heel, on which they may rest in an upright position, so that the ashes might not fall out prematurely; and on this heel the potter's name or device is usually stamped, generally in raised characters, though sometimes they are incised. Occasionally the mark is to be found on the side of the bowl. A short time ago I exhibited a series of some five-and-twenty different types at the Archæological Institution, and my collection has been enlarged considerably since. These were principally found in Shropshire and Staffordshire, and appear for the most part to have been made at Broseley. They are of a very hard and compact clay, which retains the impress of the milled ring and the stamp in all its original freshness. I shall feel much obliged by receiving any additional information upon this subject.
W. J. Bernhard Smith.
Temple.