![]() A map search of Bow during this period shows a ‘Fox and Grapes’ pub on the Mile End Road, near Thomas Fitt’s clay pipe making business. ![]() I think this ‘TF’ refers to Thomas Fitt, who lived in and ran a pipe making business at Old Ford Road, Bow, East London, during the latter part of the 1800s. There were quite a few clay pipe makers with these initials and it took me a while to trace the likely maker. The maker’s initials – TF – can be seen on the heel of the pipe bowl. I often imagine someone from centuries past, leaning on the embankment wall, clay pipe to hand, puffing away and thinking deep thoughts about life while looking out over the Thames. This is probably why we see clay pipes at low tide, either the bowl on its own or with a tiny bit of stem attached. Only when the pipe broke would it have been thrown away, discarded, much like cigarette stubs are today. Items cost money so were re-used, the clay pipe re-filled with tobacco and smoked again. Contrary to some thoughts that these clay pipes were smoked once and then thrown away, my own view is that people didn’t just dispose of things casually in the way we do now. A customer would usually buy the clay pipe with a pint of ale or beer, the tobacco included in the price, and would smoke it while drinking. Tavern pipes were extremely popular in the 1800s and spawned a variety of different designs, the decorated bowl advertising particular drinking establishments. Most likely this is a Victorian tavern pipe from an actual ‘Fox and Grapes’ public house. ![]() The vulpine pointy ears, a better view visible in the photo above showing the left side of the bowl, was the clincher. Initially I couldn’t tell exactly what the animal on the bowl was – my first thought was deer – but a fellow mudlark kindly identified it as a fox and grapes design, the fox rearing up on its hind legs in order to eat the grapes on the vine. The older, plainer pipes are still reasonably plentiful, although more likely to be incomplete, but decorated ones not so much.ġ9th century decorated clay pipe bowl with fox and grapes motif – left hand side view This is only the second decorated clay pipe bowl I’ve found this year and I probably have about twelve or so in my entire collection. Anywhere there were once wharves and warehouses where people unloaded goods from vessels and barges is a good bet. Decades of mudlarking have inevitably impacted on numbers of these objects in the river, and you also need to be on a particular part of the foreshore in order to stand a chance of finding one. Whereas once they were quite plentiful, literally tens of thousands if not more have been thrown into the river as rubbish, they are now rarer. This was a joy as decorated clay pipes are much harder to find on the Thames Foreshore these days. Once I’d gently prised it from the mud and cleaned it up I could see it was decorated. On my last mudlarking trip to the City of London foreshore, just before the second lockdown, I found a beautiful clay pipe, the stem broken but the bowl more or less intact apart from a slight chip. I’ve managed some local Thames Path walks so at least I’ve been fortunate to be near the river, out in the fresh air, and I’m enormously grateful for that. But this time things didn’t feel quite as frightening or restrictive as the first lockdown last March. We’re just coming out of a second period of nationwide lockdown and therefore my mudlarking trips to the foreshore have been few and far between.
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