Tobacco tins

Nowadays, we know that smoking is bad for our lungs and tobacco products have health warnings and are hidden out of sight in shops. Over the years, many Market Lavington shops sold cigarettes and tobacco. These included Phillips on the corner of High Street and Chapel Lane.

There was also Briants, on the corner of the Market Place.

Tom Haines was a tobacconist on High Street, when he was not being the town crier.

In Market Lavington Museum, we have various artefacts reminding us of smoking habits in days gone by, including quite a large collection of clay pipes. We also have a few tobacco tins. (See Churchman’s Tortoiseshell Smoking Mixture.) Here are two more.

People often kept the empty tins as useful storage containers for dressmaking pins and the like. This old Lambert and Butler’s tin eventually came up for sale in a Market Lavington jumble sale in 1988 and was bought for the museum.

Player’s Digger Flake tobacco was sold for many years and there were lots of variations made to the tins over time. We think this one probably dates from early in the 20th century.

Twentieth century pipe smokers did not use clay pipes, but our collection has no examples of the shorter pipes in common use during the early and middle years of the century. Maybe one of our readers would like to provide us with one with Market Lavington or Easterton provenance.