Back in 2012, I wrote a blog for the TDP about a pipe bowl that I found on the Rotherhithe foreshore, a nice one with the Prince of Wales feathers, and better still, some lettering, LEWIS HORSLEYDOWN. I did a bit of research and found some records which did indeed show some pipe makers called Lewis in the Bermondsey area.

At the time, I couldn’t pin down which of them might have made the pipe, and in fact I made a wrong guess about the possible age of the pipe. Pictures of pipe bowls of different periods made me think it might be a later 19th century pipe. I was also unaware that anything still existed of Horsleydown as an area, but now thanks to the CRaFT project, I know that Horsleydown Old Stairs are still there to be seen, and there is also a Horsleydown Lane. Nor could I find whether the pipe was a give-away from a Prince of Wales pub, which it may well have been, as there were no fewer than five of that name in Bermondsey alone in the 19th century!

And that was all, until earlier this year when the TDP received an email from Judy Tellers in London, Ontario, asking if we had any more information, as she was a descendent of a pipe-making family from Bermondsey. So then I fished out the pipe bowl from the shoebox under the bed, and had a better look. With a magnifying glass I could see that there were initials on the spur of the pipe, SL, and by looking at the Pipe Archive website. I established that these belonged to Samuel Lewis, 1744-1808, who came originally from Bristol. He worked there and in Lambeth and Horsleydown between 1774 and 1805. Many other family members over several generations made pipes in Bristol and London. A better look also at the bowl shape showed that it fits quite well with having been made between 1770 and 1820.

Judy then filled us in with her family research, which links her back to Samuel, the maker of the pipe in the late 18th or early 19th century. She is descended from a grandson of his, Samuel Robert Lewis, 1814-1882, who in 1870 left Bermondsey for Canada, with his eight children. He had been a pipe maker but was listed as a labourer by 1861. Bermondsey in the late 19th century was surely a hard place to make a living, so emigration was probably a very good option. After a 35-day voyage on SS Tweed, he went to live on a farm near Toronto.

Only two of his children stayed in Canada, the others settled in various parts of the USA. Samuel Robert’s daughter Mary Ann ‘Annie’ Lewis married the son of a French fisherman and a French Chippewa Indian, and was one of those who stayed in Canada. She was Judy’s great grandmother. The pipe bowl has now made the journey to Canada, and in return we have a photo of Judy’s 94-year-old father Earl, looking quite pleased with his lost heirloom!