Chair Arch, 1877

High Wycombe is known for chair making, especially Windsor chairs.

The impressive chair arch shown in the image above was put up in the town centre to welcome Queen Victoria on a visit in 1877. Chair making was the town’s main trade, and the people who lived here wanted to show off the local industry and their pride in it. In that year, as many as 4,700 chairs were made in High Wycombe every day! Many of the chairs that was used to build the arch are Windsor chairs, which is what the area is known for – but not all of them.

High Wycombe’s chair making heritage had begun with Windsor chair making, around 1800.

What do Windsor chairs look like?

This picture shows what kind of thing most people have in mind when they picture a Windsor chair (if they have anything in mind at all!). It’s what’s known as a wheelback Windsor chair and is the quintessential Windsor.

The name ‘wheelback’ comes from the wheel shape that’s carved into the wood of the ‘splat‘. The splat is the decorative flat piece of wood in the chair back – usually in the centre. Through history, wheelback Windsors were made both with and without arms.

Historically, Windsor armchairs were made as fireside chairs, from about the 1740s onwards. From around the 1820s chairs without arms became more common and were used as dining chairs.

Although they might be most common style, wheelback Windsors are just one of many styles of Windsor chair. They come in an endless variety of designs and sometimes look nothing like the typical wheelback Windsor.

Take a look at the chairs below. These are all Windsor chairs too!

All in the construction

So, if Windsor chairs can come in so many different styles, what is it that makes them Windsor chairs? What do all the different chairs pictured have in common? Were all Windsor chairs made in the town of Windsor? Is it about the material they’re made of, or a particular design trait?

The term ‘Windsor chair’ actually refers to the structure of the chair. The defining features of a Windsor chair actually decribe how the different parts are assembled, rather than relating to where it was made or to any one particular style of chair.

Other typical features of a Windsor

While the only defining trait of a Windsor lies in it’s construction, there are some features that are found in the majority of Windsor chairs. They are ususally:

• Made entirely of wood
• Come from a tradition of woodland crafts
• Use turned sticks or ‘spindles’ rather than sawn sections of wood

There are exceptions to all of these features, but a traditional Windsor would fit these standards.  

So, why are they called Windsor Chairs?

There is no evidence that Windsor chairs were ever made in the town of Windsor! We are often asked why they aren’t called Wycombe chairs when they were made in such large numbers here.

In the 1700s, Windsor chairs were made throughout the Chilterns and Thames Valley region. The name Windsor chair came well before there was a centre of furniture production in or near High Wycombe. It seems that chairs from the wider area were transported on the River Thames into London, and would come on boats that had started their journey in – or travelled via – Windsor. So, the name likely comes not from where they were made but where they were shipped from.

Windsor Chair Making in High Wycombe

The craft of making 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 divers uses, particularly chairmaking and turnery wares’

 The earliest references to Windsor chairs themselves are from 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.

The plentify quantity of good-quality Beech woods in the area was instrumental in High Wycombe’s furniture making history. Beech is especially good for making chair legs. It is hard, strong and lasts well. It is also easy for turners to work with. Turners could be found in the local beech woodlands from at least the 1850s until the 1920s, with a few working into the 1940s. They worked in the woods of the Chiltern Hills at Stokenchurch, Frieth, Great Hampden, Bledlow Ridge, Radnage and Beacon’s Bottom. Other types of wood were used for the other chair parts.

Turning chair legs and spindles in the woodlands is the start of making Windsor chairs. The turners – sometimes known as bodgers – would turn these wooden parts on a lathe in the woods, and then send them to be aseembled into chairs by factories in the towns. In the factories and workshops around High Wycombe, other chair parts are made, put together, and the chairs are polished before being packed for transport.

Because the turned part of chairs – all of the straight pieces like the legs and back spindles – were easy to turn from beech wood, assembling these individual parts into a chair particularly lends itself to making Windsor chairs.

Did you enjoy this blog post? Let us know you feedback – we might follow up with further blogs on other types of local furniture. Send us an email to info@wycombemuseum.org. We will read all the comments you send although we might not be able to reply to them all.

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