Joseph Holland (Manchester)
of Preston Street, Collyhurst, and Rochdale Road, Manchester
Maker of clay smokers' pipes.
1903 Photo here[1] shows, in the background, the front of Joseph Holland's factory in Preston Street, Collyhurst.
1939 'MAKING CLAY BY THOUSANDS ... 12-inch Smokes. The coolest smoke I know comes from a slender 12-inch clay "churchwarden.” Many’s the pipe-dream I’ve had stretched out before the fire with a pale-blue tip between my lips. And in Manchester, I discovered, is the factory where they make them. I never thought that in these days so many churchwardens were smoked. Yet Mr. Joseph Holland, who has been making and selling them all his life —as his father did before him — tells me he makes over a thousand gross of them a year.
His hundred-year-old factory stands just off Rochdale Road. I found him there, clay dust all over him, dipping his fingers expertly among the hundreds and hundreds of pipes, packed loosely in earthenware tubs. We climbed upstairs, where he introduced me to Joe Hill, a quiet giant from Newton Heath. Joe, says Mr. Holland, is the greatest long-pipe maker who ever lived. He learned his trade from his father, a famous pipe-maker. Joe doesn’t say much. But his fingers, as they draw the clay out to the length of his long fore-arms, speak louder than words. Neither Joe Holland nor Joe Hill seems to know how the churchwarden got its name. Does anybody know? On the same floor men were drawing “Dublin Clays,” "London Straws.” “Ally Slopers" out of metal moulds. I brought "Alley Sloper ” back in my pocket. .... Most famous of all the clays is the “London Straw,” still smoked about London. I’ve seen carefully pieced together fragments of pipes dug up under London, 200 years old if they are a day, that differ in very little from those being turned out to-day in that Manchester factory.
Confirmed “clay” smokers remain faithful to their favourites. ..... This is the quiet period of the year; business will pick next month when Bury Fair begins the showman’s year. I like a man with the courage of his own conviction. Joseph Holland says that a clay gives the finest smoke in the world. And he smokes nothing else.' [2]