Chair History

“However good they are the pews and chapel chairs do not make the Church. The Church consists of the people who sit on them. Whilst it can be a good experience to visit an empty church it is only people that make a Church where God is worshipped.”

Prior to the 1860’s, many churches and cathedrals only had chapel chairs and/or pews in the long choir or apse. This was often because churches then were in a run-down state. There was no money available, even for necessary repairs. The liturgy did not encourage the participation of the congregation and more people could be packed in for special occasions if they were standing rather than sitting.

During the 17th-19th Century, those parish churches which had church chairs or pews installed were subject to pew rents paid by the occupants for the privilege of sitting in the main aisle. The side aisles and galleries if any were used by members of the congregation who could not afford pew or chapel chair rents or were not of a sufficiently high social standard.

After the 1870’s, the use of chapel chairs and pews began to change. Social barriers slowly disappeared and greater congregation participation was encouraged. The evangelical churches actively encouraged congregational hymn singing rather than leaving it solely to the choir.

Because chapel chairs were often in adjoining blocks in the nave, it was essential that they were all identical in size and shape. This meant that the grain in the wood in the chapel chairs would have to match, requiring the co-operation of up to 100 workers involved in chapel chair production.

The timber would have to match. Elm, Beech or sometimes American ash and oak, would be bought through specialised brokers. On arrival at the workshop the timber would be placed in a hot room to reduce the moisture content to 10%. After this, the timber would be planed and all defects cut out. The blanks for the components were then cut to approximate size, ready for finishing and turning into completed chapel chairs.

When the blanks had been machined or hand turned to a high standard of finish, they would be passed to the assembly area where the chairs were put together using presses, jigs, or simply by hand. All chapel chair joints in addition to being mortised and tenoned would often be glued using horse glue or latterly urea formaldehyde glue. This glue had proved itself over the years as giving a perfect bond, having been first used in the assembly of the ash frames of early World War 1 fighters.

To give added strength the struts joining the chapel chair legs were angled. Also, to counteract the high-pressure exerted by persons leaning backwards, all legs might be braced with glue blocks or other brackets. To get the correct curve on the backs, they would be generally cut by hand or using a band saw. Modern chapel chairs are now mostly finished with an acid catalyst lacquer, one of the hardest wearing finishes known to-day. Previously church chairs would be simply waxed, oiled or shellacked.

PETER’S BASILICA IN ROME

Entering the basilica, usually by the door of Sacraments (by Crocetti), we see the Pieta in the chapel on the right. Moving as close as possible to the rear of the central door it is possible to have an overall view of the building (204 yards long and covering an area of almost six acres). The space is large enough to hold about 90,000 people. However, the seating installed for ceremonies at which the Pope presides consists of 11,500 church chairs. These church chairs are placed in the areas within view of the central altar. The huge statues represent 39 of the Founders of various religious Orders and Congregations.

HISTORY OF CHAPEL CHAIR MANUFACTURE

The furniture trade in High Wycombe today has its roots in the activities of the nineteenth century chapel chairmakers who made High Wycombe the chapel chair making capital of the world. The classic church chair was the most famous product of the trade, one of several different styles of church chairs, such as the ladder back, which developed in the eighteenth century. Much has been written about the different styles and designs of Windsor chairs and chapel chairs. What follows a brief introduction to the subject, which is covered in detail by John Mayes’ classic, The History of Chairmaking in High Wycombe.

The craft of making church chairs in the Chilterns dates to before 1700 with reference to a ‘turner’ in the Parish Register of High Wycombe in the 1680’s. Daniel Defoe, author of the classic novel Robinson Crusoe noticed in 1725 that there was:

‘a vast quantity of Beechwood which grows in the woods of Buckinghamshire more plentifully than in any other part of England’

He also added that this timber was used for: ‘beech quarters for diverse uses, particularly chair making and turnery wares’ The earliest references to Windsor chairs themselves are about this date. In the Church Records of West Wycombe for the 17th December 1732 is the following mention of the purchase of a chair – ‘Wins. chair ordered by the Vestry’ – surely a reference to a Windsor chair. When a list of men was drawn up sixty years later in 1798, for military service purposes, more than fifty chair makers were recorded as living in the Borough and Parish of High Wycombe and in the Parish of West Wycombe, with many more in the villages around. Among the early chair makers were the families of Treacher and Widgington. A billhead of the 1790’s bears the printed heading ‘William Treacher, dyed and fancy chapel chairs’ indicating an active business at that time.

In these early days, the production focused on church chair parts which were sent up to London to be framed-up into chairs. Over the next 50 years local landowners begin to make available premises in High Wycombe to enable the work to be completed in the Town itself.

BODGERS MAKE CHAPEL CHAIRS

From the earliest days of the trade most of the lathe-turned church chair parts were made by itinerant turners or ‘bodgers’ living in the villages surrounding High Wycombe. Historically, the turning skills required by the chair industry had been applied to the production of bowls, spoons and other items, which provided a pool of skilled labour from which the church chair part turners developed. The use of the term bodger to describe these craftsmen is probably a twentieth century device, and certainly it is not used during the 1840s and 1850s when the number of turners working in the Chilterns reaches its peak.

The turners worked by buying stands of trees from estate owners at auctions, which were then felled and converted into chair stretchers and legs. Some worked in rough thatched shelters in the wood where the trees were felled. The majority worked in sheds nearer to home. The beech logs were firstly split and roughly shaped using a side axe, and then further shaped with a draw shave while the turner sat on a wooden shave horse. The turner’s most famous piece of equipment, the pole lathe, was powered by a long, flexible length of sapling, and was used to cut the finished design onto the church chair part. The finished article was then sold to the Wycombe factory owners. The metal framed treadle wheel lathe was widely used as an alternative to the pole lathe. Some of the turners were self-employed, while others seem to have worked in groups:

‘William Biggs, Stokenchurch, master turner, employing twelve men and two boys’ (1881 census) Sharing the woods until the introduction of steam powered circular saw were the pit-sawyers, producing the planks for seats and other chapel chair parts. Working in pairs, their job involved digging a deep pit over which they erected a wooden framework. The ‘under dog’ worked in the bottom of the pit while the ‘top dog’ stood on top guiding the saw. The overgrown pits can still be seen today in the woods surrounding the town.

The census returns from 1841 onwards cast light on the distribution of turners in the area. By this date they are recorded living in High Wycombe, Great Kingshill, West Wycombe and Downley, villages evenly spread across the district. More than twenty bodgers lived in Radnage and Stokenchurch, while Great Kingshill, Beacon’s Bottom, Bledlow Ridge and High Wycombe had more than a dozen each. In several of the villages north of Wycombe turning was the only church chair employment – Holmer Green, Wycombe Heath, Widmer End, Bryants Bottom and Stoney Cross – while the ‘hills’ villages, about four miles out of town to the northwest, all have turning as the most important chapel chair-related employment.

CHAPEL CHAIRS AND DOUBLING TURNERS

Between 1861 and 1881 the number of turners in the district almost doubled, from 186 to 340, reflecting the still-rising demand for chapel chairs. Stokenchurch and Radnage remained two of the most important centres but were joined by Beacons Bottom, and then overtaken by High Wycombe; all four settlements had 395 resident turners in 1881. Three villages still had all their church chair employment in turning, and are found in a cluster about five miles north of the town – Bryants Bottom, Stoney Cross and Prestwood.

Between the years 1800-1860 the number of workshops in High Wycombe grew from a handful to one hundred and fifty, and by 1875 their total output had risen to an estimated number of 4700 chairs per day, many of which being church chairs – a remarkable figure. The area in and around High Wycombe became the biggest producer of chapel chairs in the country, and between 1851 and 1871 the population of High Wycombe Borough and Parish grew by 46%.

An important factor in the growth of the trade was the massive growth in population nationally, particularly in London, which meant that the market for Wycombe-made church chairs was constantly growing. The growth of the town as a production centre was sufficient to suppress the development of others in the same area. Demand from London and the South East was soon satisfied by exports from the Chiltern region and production responded to demand so quickly that no other town could compete. The trade continued to grow, its market spreading into the Midlands and the North. By 1850 the other church chair regional centres such as the North West and the Cotswolds were in decline, as a direct result of this competition.

ROYAL CHAPEL CHAIRS

Some larger firms were occasionally commissioned to design and produce presentation furniture for important events, including church chairs for the weddings of the Prince and Princess of Wales (later Edward VII and Queen Alexandra) and the Duke of York and Princess Mary (later George V and Queen Mary). Very large commissions were regularly taken. In 1873 an order for 19,200 chairs for a meeting held by the evangelists Moody and Sankey was completed in a few weeks and despatched to London. On another occasion, 8000 chairs were required for Crystal Palace, while in 1874 the firm of Walter Skull made 2500 rush-seated chairs for St. Pauls Cathedral, 100 examples of which we had in our possession in 2001.

Visits to the town by important people were sometimes celebrated by arches of chairs which were erected across the High Street between the Guildhall and the houses opposite. The most famous of these arches which celebrated the arrival of Prince Edward in 1880 shows the sheer range of chairs that were made in the area by this time. The base of the arch consisted of Windsors but the rest was made up of a great variety of different styles.

CHAPEL CHAIRS ON CARTS

Up to the First World War the majority of chapel chairs still went to market piled high on horse drawn carts, wrapped in straw for protection. The Great Western Railway branch line had passed through Wycombe from the 1850’s but it was not until two decades later that the railways were linked with the trade, and used to distribute church chairs. It seems however that the chair makers were not very satisfied with the service: late arrivals, insufficient covered storage space, damaged chairs, and thefts during journeys were all cause for complaint (as reported in the Bucks Free Press on 23rd July 1859, 16th January 1874 or 27th February 1874, to mention only a few occasions). The church chair maker William Keen invested in a steam wagon in 1904, and made the round trip to London and back with a double trailer in 14 hours.

At the end of the nineteenth century church chair maker James Cox employed several travelling sales representatives, but most smaller manufacturers sold their own wares or employed a carrier:

‘When I began the trade, I loaded my cart and travelled to Luton. All there was prosperous. There was a scramble for my church chairs’ … this manufacturer now sends his church chairs to London, Liverpool and Manchester, to Australia, New Zealand and Constantinople’ (Knight’s British Almanac 1862, quoting Walter Skull).

By this time also many of the bigger church chair making firms were exhibiting in showrooms in London and sending furniture to the great International Exhibitions and Trade Fairs all over the world.

The transition from being a church chair town to becoming the second largest furniture making town in the country took place between 1880 and 1920. During this period, the Census records a surge in the number of cabinet makers, upholsterers, carvers and marquetry cutters in the Town, in addition to the church chair makers.

CHURCHILL AND CHAPEL CHAIRS

Stung by Randolph Churchill’s statement in Parliament that Wycombe church chairs were ‘cheap and nasty’, a number of manufacturers began in the 1880s to diversify into making higher-class and more general furniture. By the end of the 1890s, Birch’s in particular was supplying furniture for Liberty’s and other prestigious London stores, and employing well-known designers such as EG Punnett and George Whitehead to produce furniture that was influenced by Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts movement.

Some of the larger East London furniture makers, such as Frederick Parker (later Parker Knoll), moved to High Wycombe and contributed to the change to a more broad-based furniture trade. The trade still demonstrated a mix of handcraft and more machine-orientated systems, with a quantity of turners still working in the woods after the First World War, and women working on the caning and rushing of chair seats in their homes. Small workshops remained important, including those in the yards behind public houses. The tenants of the Spread Eagle in 1875 included a sawyer, a benchman, a back-maker and a Windsor framer. But both factory and workforce sizes were increasing towards the end of the century. James Cox and Sons employed one hundred and fifty, while North and Sons of West Wycombe employed most of the village population which stood at around six hundred by the end of the century. New premises were built, including Birch’s ‘state of the art’ new three storey brick factory in Denmark Street.

With the introduction of machinery, particularly after the First World War, production soared and the local trade extended the range of its products. The Second World War saw innovations that would later have a major effect on the furniture trade: box springs in upholstery were replaced by foam, staples supplemented woodworking joints, painted foils and papers were used in place of wood in the cheapest models, nitrocellulose could replace French polish, but probably the most important event was the development of plywood which was soon widely used.

THE WAR AND CHAPEL CHAIRS

Designs towards the end of the War, and immediately after, were strongly influenced by the Government imposed Utility scheme lasting ten years from 1941. Demand for domestic furniture was high, but the trade was frustrated by shortages of fuel and materials. Most companies produced furniture within the Utility range, while a small number of luxury orders kept higher class factories going. Shortages eased and controls were lifted over time. The advent of hire purchase opened the floodgates of consumer demand and the 1950s were prosperous years. National advertising became an option in 1951, and Ercol and Gomme’s joined Parker Knoll in this new venture. New designs, products and systems were introduced: Ercol took up the Windsor theme, a bold step after the nastiness of the late machined models, looking for new ideas of quality; Gomme brought out the G-Plan range, a series of coordinating furniture units that could be bought individually.

10,000 furniture workers in 1939 had declined to 8000 by 1960. The relocation of many London companies to High Wycombe during the War had caused property prices in the area to soar, making it more and more expensive to maintain factories locally and forcing some of the biggest to move elsewhere. There were still more than a hundred firms in the area in 1960, many within the old Borough, but much of the simple mass-produced contract work was based in surrounding villages: Stokenchurch produced thousands, while Dancer and Hearne of Penn Street produced 10,000 chairs a week.

Tremendous advances in wood treatment and mechanization raised output per man so that production figures continued to rise, although employment continued to fall to approximately 4000 in 1990. For the workers who remain, the introduction of machinery such as spray booths, which extract harmful vapours given off by sprays and polishes, and other improvements, have made the furniture factory a much healthier environment than it once was. The Buckinghamshire Chiltern University College, based in the town and founded in the early part of this century, gained a national reputation for training in woodwork, timber technology and furniture design, and provided a sound training framework from which the trade could develop further.

CHAPEL CHAIRS TODAY AND TOMORROW

In 1992 there were 36 wholesale members of the British Furniture Manufacturers Association in the Wycombe District. These ranged from large firms such as Ercol in High Wycombe and Hypnos in Princes Risborough to much smaller operations. In addition, there is a quantity of individual craftsmen working out of small workshops. The decade has already seen much change with the recession claiming the huge G-Plan factory in 1992 with the loss of 700 jobs; the closure and subsequent demolition of Glenisters, the oldest surviving furniture making company; and the decision by Parker Knoll to stop making furniture in High Wycombe. In 1999 High Wycombe’s largest furniture maker, Ercol, announced that it was moving to Princes Risborough. High property prices continue to encourage firms to relocate in cheaper areas. However, the roots of the furniture industry run deep in the Town, enough to ensure that furniture and church chairs will continue to be made in High Wycombe for many years to come.