Although clay tobacco pipes are still made today their place in history is the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Until about 1890 the clay pipe was as common-place as the tankard of ale and the mug of tea, but competition from the briar pipe, the cigar and the cigarette brought the clay-pipe industry to an end about 1900. These old pipes are now being eagerly looked for an picked up by the hundreds, and the enthusiastic finder is confronted with many quetsions. How old is it? How was it made? Where was it made? The aim of this book is to answer these questions and to record the part the humble 'clay' once played in our society.