The framer puts the parts together into a finished chair. In some factories, he would have added his initials stamp to make sure he got paid for the chairs he made. Museum Number MHW:12489.

Why Are They Called Bodgers?

No-one knows for sure why chair leg turners from the Chilterns became known as ‘bodgers’. A bodger is usually someone who does a bad or an unfinished job. Turners were skilled craftsmen who did not seem to call themselves bodgers. The use of the term probably started in the 20th century, and certainly it is not used during the 1840s and 1850s when the number of turners working in the Chilterns reaches its peak. In fact, ‘bodger’ doesn’t appear in writing at all until 1911. Perhaps the factory workers who were completing the chairs first called them bodgers, because they were only beginning the chair and never finishing it!

While they may not have completed the chairs, they were accomplished craftspeople, producing many hundreds of chair parts in a week. They sold their wares in a group called a ‘gross’ which was the parts for 36 chairs – 144 legs and 108 stretcher parts. They would need to make two and half gross to earn a living wage of twelve shillings and sixpence to survive on. That’s 360 legs and 270 stretcher parts. Turners would work 12-hour days five and a half days a week, to earn their living.

‘I worked from the time I could see in the morning to the time I couldn’t see any more at night, and even then in the winter I saved the lathe work till after dark and stuck candle ends on the poppets and went on turning’.

An unnamed turner quoted by John Mayes in ‘The History of Chair Making in High Wycombe’.

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. The bend of the sapling provided power to spin the piece of wood to be cut into the desired shape and design. 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 – there is record in the 1881 census of a ‘William Biggs, Stokenchurch, master turner, employing twelve men and two boys’. 

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 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 chair-related employment.

Between 1861 and 1881 the number of turners in the district almost doubled, from 186 to 340, reflecting the still-rising demand for 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 chair employment in turning, and are found in a cluster about five miles north of the town   Bryants Bottom, Stoney Cross and Prestwood.

Saw Pits

Sharing the woods with the turners, at least until the introduction of steam powered circular saw, were the pit sawyers. They produced the planks for seats and other 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.