This
player has a 3-drone ivory set, with a blackwood or ebony chanter, and
dates from about 1800. The set is still owned by a player in Northumberland.
The earliest extant set of Northumbrian-style bellows blown smallpipes is from the late 17th century, is made of ivory with a parallel bored chanter, has 3 drones and 8 fingerholes, and an open end. Its maker is not known. No other region of the country has anything similar. There is also a written description of a closed end smallpipe dating from 1695, which is described as 'Scotch', but in context, this term could at the time have included Northern England
There was little standardisation in early smallpipes. Although there are relatively few examples, it is believed that individual sets responded to different fingering patterns, some being designed for the conical bore, or Highland style fingering, whilst others were set up so that they could be played using closed fingering. In addition to closed and open ended smallpipes, a number of styles of conically bored, open-ended, bellows-blown pipes were also played on both sides of the Border, and arguably in the areas beyond (Yorkshire, Lancashire, and the rest of Scotland). See other related pipes for further confusion.
It is known that there were players of both 'smallpipes' and 'large Northumberland' pipes in the 18th century, and it is at this point that players names become known to us - Allan, Lamshaw, Cant, Young to name a few from many. The earliest UK bagpipe manuscript is also from this period, and from Northumberland.
This
player has a 3-drone ivory set, with a blackwood or ebony chanter, and
dates from about 1800. The set is still owned by a player in Northumberland.
It is not known when or how the Northumbrian smallpipe chanter acquired its stopped end - the 1695 reference referred to earlier obviously implies a pre-existing instrument of some standing, but throughout the 18th century closed and open-ended smallpipes seem to have existed in parallel. At about this time the Union pipes (of which there were several makers in the area) acquired their first regulators (also a stopped end system). It was a time of great experimentation in all forms of instrument building.
From about 1780 the closed-end pipes became the dominant type in Northumberland until the revival of the 'large' pipes, be it half-longs in the 1920's, or Border pipes in the 70's and 80's.
It occurred to players of the time - possibly John Peacock in collaboration with John Dunn - that as in regulators, keys could be added, and the effective range of the chanter (up till then only 8 notes) increased. The first four keys were added to the smallpipes by about 1805, with successive makers, notably the Reid family gradually extending the range, till by 1860 they were available with up to 17 keys. This enabled the players of the time to play not only more complicated variations on the old airs inherited from the earlier centuries, but also to play fiddle tunes, and in particular the fiddle hornpipes which were so popular at the time.
They remained a minority interest, and suffered competition from other instruments, such as the concertina, but were maintained by a number of families of pipers, notably the Cloughs of Newsham, who taught circles of pupils throughout the 19th century. Players were scattered throughout Northumberland and Durham, and most had contact with others, which helped to keep piping alive. In the 1920's a group of Tyneside revivalists started the Northumbrian Pipers Society to counteract a perceived decline, and interest in the NSP has been on the increase ever since.
See piping people for more details on some of the significant figures in smallpipes history.
Though various minor modifications of key position, mechanism, and materials etc have occurred in the last 150 years, and electronic pipes are now available, the modern instrument is basically as it was designed in the 1820-1850 period. For some, this is part of the attraction .
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