Lane's heirs had no special interest in either Charatan or in Ben Wade and sold it to Dunhill Pipes Limited in 1978. This sad little story was not one of Charatan's or Lane's proudest moments!'

Quotation of an American pipe dabster: 'It's a shame to see how a famous old family name can be dragged into the mud by people who want to capitalize on a good reputation earned by men who are long dead. Nothing was left from the quality of the pipes once made in Leeds! The stamping now read 'Made in London England' or just 'London'. Therewith Ben Wade degenerated definitively to a second brand. The pipes often showed hardly masqued fillings and were processed quite coarsely with hardly polished pre-moulded Ebonite stems. (Some sources say 'not earlier than 1973' but proven by cataloges this isn't true.) Alas the 'new' Ben Wades were quite usual series pipes, copies of well known standard shapes.

Lane had the pipe making machines brought from Leeds to London and used the well esteemed name Ben Wade to start the fabrication of entirely machine-made pipes at Charatan's Prescott Street factory.

What appears to be a Ben Wad Champion, courtesy Doug ValitchkaĬirca '70s, London factory, post Family Era nomenclature.

The name continued to appear in brand directories st least through the early sixties, however it's unclear whether production was actually resumed. The Champion disappeared during the War when the Ben Wade line was materially slimmed down, presumably to reflect difficulties of supply. Champion was in the last group, and in the 1930s at least retailed for 2/6. But the Ben Wade family decided to re-build it immediately after the war and pipe production was re-started soon and successfully linked to the fame from the pre-war years.īefore the second war Ben Wade clustered their offerings into three price points: 'Ben Wade' included the higher end pipes (eg the Larnix, Super Grain, Selected Grain, etc), 'BW' included the mid-level pipes (eg Statesman, Natural Grain, County, etc), and 'BWL' were the least expensive (eg Hurlingham, Adelphi, Tense Grain). In the second World War the factory was destroyed by German air raids on Leeds.

Rdr online ben wade