Tobacco pipe

This pipe was excavated from a cesspit on the site of Tom's Coffee House in Wood Street, just off Cheapside in the City of London. We know Tom's Coffee House was out of business by 1740.

From the 1630s until the 19th century, coffee houses were essential spaces for men to conduct business, for news, for gossip and for company. In the early 18th century there were over 2,000 coffee houses in London.

Smoking was prevalent in coffee houses. Many late 17th and 18th commentators noted how such places were full of smoke and stank of tobacco. The pipe has a plain bowl and a shallow pedestal spur with an illegible maker's stamp.

Tobacco was grown by hundreds of thousands of enslaved African forced to work the Georgian tobacco fields in Virginia, Maryland, and other British colonies.Tobacco shops first appeared in London in 1605. Tobacco remained the second most important colonial crop (after sugar) to Britain's economy throughout the eighteenth century. The virtues and vices of tobacco were debated throughout the century, in travelogues, trade pamphlets, poems, and written accounts.