Pipe up if you can solve Bridgnorth riddle
Here's a view to put your pipe out.
It is a photo from the collection of the late Walter Rutter, of Bridgnorth, and Mr Rutter wrote an indication on his slide that it is houses being demolished at a clay pipe factory at Banks Corner.
"This is a name I've not heard of," says Mr Ralph Walker, who holds the pictures from Mr Rutter's collection.
"Some years ago they were digging out foundations at the top of Pound Street and they uncovered tons of scrap smoking pipes."
He's looked on the internet and found a reference to a Whitburn Street Pipe Works which ended production in 1884.
"All I can think is that the cottages were built on the site, then demolished later in the 1920s or 1930s. This is only a guess."
Rex Key of Broseley Pipe Works has been trying to find out more.
"I've researched as best I can, but details are sketchy," said Rex.
"The Southorn pipeworks was at 1 Pound Street, also known as Squirrel Bank, so I assume Banks Corner means Squirrel Bank.
"There is a Bank Street in Bridgnorth but there is no reference of a pipeworks ever having been there. The only other pipeworks in the town was at Foundry Yard in Low Town.
"The Southorns operated their factory from 1799 until the 1880s, first by Thomas Southorn then his widow Elizabeth, then their son John.
"The Society for Clay Pipe Research estimates that between 1850 and 1875 as many as 13 people were employed at any one time producing about a million pipes a year.
"I don’t know how the cottages linked with the pipe factory but four years ago the site at 1 Pound Street was developed for housing and the base of a pipe kiln and a mass of broken pipes unearthed."
