Chairs and chairmakers
Bodgers at work. Stuart King Collection.
In the mid-19th century, the woods and valleys echoed with the strikes of axes, the rasps of saws, the hum of lathes, and the shouts of men as they laboured to supply wood for fuel and timber for woodware and furniture workshops, or worked at the craft of wood turning, or ‘chair bodging’.
Bodgers were men who worked in the woods using foot-powered pole lathes to supply turned chair parts for the furniture workshops and factories in and around High Wycombe. Chairmaking in the Chilterns goes back at least to the 17th century, and by the middle of the 19th century, the region and the town of High Wycombe were rapidly becoming the leading centre for the industry in Britain. By 1877, 150 workshops were producing 4,700 chairs each day! The local woodware industry expanded at the same time, and Chesham became an important centre for the manufacture of wooden domestic and dairy utensils.
Wycombe Museum has a fine collection of Chilterns chairs and the new galleries upstairs tell the fascinating story of the local furniture trade.
Local craftsman, woodturner and photojournalist Stuart King also has lots of information about woodturning and the wood trades on his website.
The last of the Chilterns bodgers, Sam Rockall, died in 1962, but some Woodlanders researchers have written wonderful first-hand accounts of their relatives who worked in these trades.
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The Story of Daniel George Thorn, by his great-grandson Graham
One day, I don’t know why I was struck by a moment of curiosity, I asked my father about my great-grandfather. |
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Memories of my Father, Reginald Tilbury by Doug Tilbury
My father Reginald Tilbury was born in 1898 and died at 92 years of age. |
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Alice Dean writes about her father-in-law, working his pole lathe
I first became interested in these craftsmen in 1932 when I started visiting the home of my [soon to be] husband in Speen, this pretty village in the Chilterns. I would watch for hours my father-in-law, Richard Dean working his pole lathe. |
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Mavis Warner’s video tells the story of woodturner Bert White (1887-1990) of Beacon’s Bottom; you can hear him talking about his work in the 1950s. |
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Chairmaker Sidney Wingrove (1898-1994) was recorded in the 1980s talking to local craftsman Stuart King. In this video Jane Barker uses Sidney’s own words to tell about his working life .
Sidney Wingrove (1898-1994) remembers chairmaking in Winchmore Hill |
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Gil Webb (1894-1990) began work as an agricultural labourer and later became a chairmaker. Keith Spencer introduces him here: |
By the end of the 19th century, many women were also working in the chair industry, making the chair seats using the skilled crafts of caning, and rushing or ‘matting’. They would sometimes sing at their work.
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This is one of their songs, telling of a young man whose heart was broken by a pretty caning girl. |
Woodlanders Lives volunteers have also produced some important new research on furniture companies located in Chilterns villages:
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Richard Ayers is the great-great-grandson of Joseph Hatch, who established his chair factory at Whielden Gate near Amersham |
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Simon Cains researched the furniture factory village of Piddington, near High Wycombe, built by Benjamin North the second, and he published two articles on the company history: A Tale of Two Furniture Factories Part 1 and Part 2 |
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Tony Sargent looks at the challenges faced by the furniture-making industry during the First World War, particularly how they managed conscription. |
Chilterns Heritage and Archaeology Partnership
Chalk, Cherries and Chairs
Discover the timeline of the Chilterns
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