Bowles & Son Ltd

Bowles & Son Ltd was a Welsh tobacconist company based in Cardiff that operated from 1888 to 1979. It did not make pipes; it delivered pipes and tobacco to the user — retailing through its own shops on one hand, and supplying pubs, clubs, and small tobacconists across South East Wales wholesale on the other. Because the history of British pipes is usually told through manufacturers, this intermediate link, often overlooked, matters for showing the routes by which the product spread into the provinces.

Three Generations Within the Family

The company remained in the Bowles family's hands throughout its ninety-year existence, effectively bearing out the "& Son" in its name. In the 1950s the business was headed by Reginald Bowles and his brother Ivor Bowles. Management passed to the next generation, two cousins: Reginald's son Tom and Ivor's son William (Bill) Bowles; it was these two who made the decision to sell in 1979. With the sale, the Bowles name withdrew from Cardiff tobacconism.

A Network of Shops

The head office was at 9 James Street in Butetown, the district opening onto Cardiff's docks. The building's three floors were each dedicated to a different function of the business: the basement for storage, the ground floor for sales, the first floor for offices. The basement store also had a separate curing room where cigars were rested.

The retail arm spread across the city centre. The company's shops stood on Cardiff's busy streets — St. Mary's Street, Castle Street, Queen Street, and High Street — with a branch also in the neighbouring town of Pontypridd, on the road up to the railway station. Records indicate the number of branches reached eleven at one point. Some of these had been taken over from Percy Cadle, known from 1907 local newspaper reports to have run a tobacconist business in Cardiff; how many shops the takeover covered and in which year it occurred cannot be determined from the records. The shops were furnished similarly to one another, yet were not identical: two had a barber section at the back, and one had a confectionery counter.

Shelves of a Port District

Butetown was Cardiff's port district, which made its customer base unusually varied for Britain of the period. Alongside domestic blends, the shelves also carried foreign brands sought by the district's established Somali community and by sailors calling at the port. Since the pipe was still an everyday habit in the first half of the twentieth century, the range of pipes was wide, complemented by accessories such as matches, wicks, pipe cleaners, lighters, and ashtrays. At the time, lighters and ashtrays were not disposable items but pieces kept for years.

The wholesale arm, in turn, made the company a regional distribution point. In the era's English market, products from English manufacturers such as Barling and Comoy's of London also largely reached small retailers through this kind of regional wholesaler.

The Trace Left in the Archives

The company's commercial papers are today preserved at the Glamorgan Archives. These documents are counted among the few records that make it possible to trace, in detail, how the briar and clay pipe trade was carried on in a city outside the capital.