Old Pipe Found on Beach

My friend found this old pipe on the beach tother' day. He found it within five minutes of arriving at the beach (at 5 bloody am, in near darkness.) It was up on the high tide line stranded on the seaweed, and apart from missing half of the bowl, the stem was nearly intact.

The pipe looks brown in the picture, but was originally white. It has a stamp on the bowl. The stamp is the initial T.D, inside a heart, with a flower shape under the initials. I had a look online and found the same stamp on pipes from the 1600's-1700's. I read that a good way to date a pipe is to measure the hole in the stem. You can do this with small drill bits. We have not measured it yet, but intend to. It has a line down it that suggests that this pipe was made in a mold.

It's quite exciting to think that the pipe may have lain in the ocean for hundreds of years, before being tossed ashore. I'll be sending this pipe (if my friend agrees) along with some other pottery objects that I've found to finds.org to be verified and recorded.

We also found some bits of pottery, very worn by the sea, and I found a strange piece of driftwood which has a brass plug or piece of joinery sticking out of it, and lots of beautiful seashells.

One of the beautiful seashells I found on the beach, this one is a warty venus clam, one of the more unusual seashells found in the UK.