McGahey

McGahey is the name of a long-lived tobacconist shop in the English city of Exeter, in the southwest, and of the pipes the shop stamped with its own name. This is not an independent pipe workshop but a retailer brand: the pipes usually carry only the shop's name and an M on them. Although the Pipedia entry lists the brand under an American heading, the records that can be obtained tie the business entirely to Devon.

The Shop's History

The business takes 1880 as its founding year. According to local records, the person who started the tobacconist trade at the High Street address was Frank J. Halfyard; the year the McGahey family took over the business does not clearly appear in the records. The shop was run in turn by Edgar, Michael, and Martin McGahey; these three generations became the business's known face.

Its hardest test came during the Second World War. The May 1942 bombing of Exeter destroyed the shop, and sales were carried on from a hut set up in the garden of a house on Barnfield Road. Weathering this period under Edgar McGahey's management, the business returned to High Street in 1955 with a shop right next to its old site; Edgar died the same year. Michael McGahey, who had been involved in the business since 1942, took over management and expanded the business by opening corner kiosks at London Inn Square, Princesshay, and Heavitree. Martin McGahey joined the firm in 1973 and worked alongside his father for a time.

Final Period

The premises at No. 245 were fully refurbished in March 1988; the redesign kept a traditional look alongside modern shop fittings. When Michael McGahey retired in February 1992, the business was the last independent retailer still standing on High Street. In 1996, due to the property owner's renovation plans, the business moved to Princesshay for a few months; once the work was finished it returned to the same address, this time to a corner unit.

According to the record, the High Street shop closed in 2019, and one of the city's oldest merchants thus took down its sign. According to Pipedia, Martin McGahey served as chairman of the Alliance of Pipe Clubs of Great Britain; this information cannot be confirmed in independent records.

Its Pipes

McGahey-stamped briar pipes are the product of a practice very common in British retail: the pipes are made at other workshops while the stamp carries the shop's name. Which workshops were used is not stated in the records; the true maker of a McGahey pipe can therefore only be guessed from its shape dimensions, molding habits, and workmanship details. Quality naturally varies by supplier as well; the common thread is the stamp itself.

Such shop brands are valued in collecting less as the signature of a single master than as the trace of a particular city's trading tradition. McGahey pipes today, too, are mostly associated with the local tobacco-trade history of Exeter.