James Fox, Clara Kings County, 1921

Uilleann Pipes
1

Last year I acquired a lovely old set of hand stitched bellows. The metal air intake is clearly stamped ‘P. Brown’ - for Patsy Brown of Boston, who made my old Taylor style chanter, and is a thought to be a potential maker of my old Taylor style drones and regs.

Being close to 100 years old, they required complete restoration and re-leathering, which Jackie Boyce is doing for me. Interestingly, Jackie emailed me yesterday to say he has disassembled the bellows, and found scratched into the inside of one of the clappers

Built
by
James Fox
Clara Kings County
Ireland
June 1921

I’ve bee in touch with NPU and they have no record of anyone by that name in their database.

An interesting discovery indeed.

More to follow.

Rick

2

And update on my earlier post.

Here are some photos of the scratched inscription. Not the easiest thing to read in the photos, but you can clearly make out parts. I’m told it is much easier to read in person.

3

Interesting stuff. I just did a quick search in the old census records and there are about 16 hits for James Fox in King’s co in 1911, which is a whole decade away but worth a shot. None for Clara, but four in Tullamore which is only maybe 10-12 km away.