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.