Artefacts gifted by former factory owners' family go on display at Broseley Pipeworks

The Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust has received a gift of original saggars and pipes that have gone on display at the Broseley Pipeworks in time for it's summer opening this week.

In spring 2024, the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, the heritage conservation and education charity that runs the museum, was contacted by descendants of the Southorn family, the owners of Broseley Pipeworks when it closed in the 1950s.

When the family sold the pipeworks to the Trust in 1991, it kept some of the original objects from inside, including more than 100 saggars, containers in which smaller pieces of pottery are enclosed during firing to protect them from direct exposure to the kiln's heat.

In spring this year, 33 years later, the family contacted the Trust as it wished to gift the saggars to the museum. The Trust’s curators were delighted, even more so when they opened the saggars and found thousands of clay pipes arranged neatly inside, laid out for firing.

Kate Cadman, Collections Curator at the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, said: “We are delighted to welcome these original saggars back to Broseley Pipeworks. It was a wonderful surprise to find the pipes inside and remarkable that they have survived.

“This was a generous gift by the Southorn family that will help us show visitors to the pipeworks the scale of clay pipe production in Broseley and give them a greater insight into the manufacturing process.”

The Broseley Pipeworks was originally called the Crown Pipeworks and owned by Rowland Smitheman. From the mid-19th century Smitheman, along with two branches of the Southorn family, was one of the big three pipemakers in Broseley. Pipes from Broseley were sold in the UK and all over the world.

The Trust’s curators believe that sometime before the 1920s Smitheman’s son gave up pipe making. In the mid-1930s Harry Southorn, son of William Edwin Southorn, took over the Smitheman’s site, possibly downsizing due to decreased demand for clay pipes with the rise of cigarette smoking.

After Harry Southorn died in the late 1950s, his sons Ivor and Clive briefly continued the business, by now one of Britain’s last tobacco clay pipe factories, but by the end of the decade, the pipeworks had closed.

The Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust acquired the pipeworks in 1991. By then the buildings were in poor condition and major repair work was required. The pipeworks officially opened to the public in 1996.

All the saggars, with the pipes inside, have gone on display in two rooms at the Broseley Pipeworks. The museum is now open throughout the summer Thursdays and Saturdays until September 14.

The pipeworks will also host pipe-making demonstrations led by Oliver Meeson (Saturdays) and James Ashwell (Thursdays) from Thursday, July 25 to Saturday, August 31 and volunteer pipeworkers the following two weeks.

According to the Heritage Crafts Association, Oliver is one of only half a dozen professional pipe makers in the UK. Clay pipe making is in the Critically Endangered category on the Association’s Heritage Crafts Red List, and considered at serious risk of no longer being practised in the UK.

James’s residency at the pipeworks has been funded by the Heritage Crafts Association. As well as pipe making at the Broseley Pipeworks on Thursdays he will be experimenting with making pipe moulds from plastic using 3D printing on other days at another of the Trust’s museums, Enginuity.

Traditionally pipe moulds were made from cast iron. When pipe making declined many were melted down, and originals are now collector’s items and rare.

With James’s new method it may be possible to make copies of rare originals and preserve originals. Greater availability of moulds will mean more pipe makers can practise their craft.

Kate Cadman continued: “Pipe making, especially using traditional methods, is a disappearing skill. We are delighted to have Oliver and James, the new generation of makers, on-site at the Broseley Pipeworks demonstrating these traditional skills. It will be exciting to see the impact of James’s work developing moulds and how this might help encourage new makers.

“For visitors, it will be an exciting opportunity to see a traditional craft brought to life in the environment where it was practised by our ancestors in the past.”

Conservation work is also currently taking place at Broseley Pipeworks to restore and repair parts of the building while retaining the building’s unique time capsule atmosphere.

The work is part of a three-year programme of repair and conservation to some 49 internationally important heritage buildings and monuments in the care of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust.

It is being funded by a £9.9 million grant to the Trust from the National Heritage Memorial Fund to counter long-term impacts of the pandemic as part of the Cultural Assets Fund.