Explore Your Archive November 28th: SMALL OLD CLAY PIPE
One of the smallest items in the Hoar Oak Cottage archive is a clay pipe discovered by one of the building conservation workmen when working on the chimney. It is approximately 4” in length and the bowl is less than 1” in diameter. The fingers clasping the bowl may be representing a claw – as in a bird’s claw – but others (who know a thing or two about clay pipes) have suggested it is actually a hand – as in the fingers of a human hand. The pipe, intact other than a small end piece missing, was found tucked away up inside the chimney built into the western end of the cottage.
We know very little about this clay pipe other than it is likely to date from around 1875 to 1915 and could, therefore, relate to the occupants of the cottage around that period. We have learnt that in some cases, such pipes were hidden in a secret place and left as a tribute to a smoker who had passed away in the house or cottage where the pipe was found. It seems families might hide the deceased’s precious clay pipe as a sort of ‘in memorium’ to be found in the future.
James Maxwell Johnstone was the shepherd living at Hoar Oak Cottage with his wife Sarah and 13 children from 1886 to 1904. James died at the cottage in March 1904 and records show that Sarah and the children were quickly moved out of Hoar Oak Cottage – a sheep farm always needs a shepherd, and those needs took precedence over those of the bereaved wife and family. Johnstone family memories include those of James smoking a clay pipe and its intriguing to wonder if when he died, Sarah or one of the older children, hid one of his clay pipes high up in the chimney as a little ‘in memoriam’. We shall never know but this small artefact is certainly a precious one in the Hoar Oak Cottage archive.