Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back armchair, with 4 domed ladders with downward shaping, straight back poles with tapered feet and flattened top finials, rushing bars, turned front legs morticed into the seat frame, with pad feet, front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double side and rear stretchers WS 121

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back armchair, with 4 domed ladders with downward shaping, straight back poles with tapered feet, and flattened top finials, rushing bars, turned front legs morticed into the seat frame, with pad feet, front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double side and rear stretchers WS 121

This chair was offered for sale at a south Lincolnshire auction house along with 4 side chairs. It's made out of ash with fruitwood arms. The rush seat has been repaired in a very poor manner and there is some loss of height due to wear on the legs . However these carvers are very rare and so I was particularly pleased to collect this one along with the 4 side chairs that went with it. Once again there are metal pins to secure the ladders to the uprights and scribe marks to aid construction, just as in the 3 chairs in WS 120; I am in no doubt that they are came from the same workshop.

© William Sergeant 2018

Unusual Lincolnshire ladder back rush-seated side chair with 4 domed ladders with downward shaping, straight back poles, rushing bars, turned front legs morticed into the seat, two opposed-pear front stretcher almost never found in Lincolnshire, double side and rear stretchers WS 185

Unsual Lincolnshire ladder back rush-seated side chair with 4 domed ladders with downward shaping, straight back poles, rushing bars, turned front legs morticed into the seat, two opposed-pear front stretcher almost never found in Lincolnshire,  double side and rear stretchers WS 185

My talk at Spilsby in the spring of 2017 created much interest and it was during the public chair surgery the following day that I was told about this rush-seated chair that was in a church near Coningsby. When I was shown the photo that a member of the public had brought along, I was put in a quandary. The design was just so typical of a simple Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back chair, remarkably similar to the chairs that I find in the south of the county. What puzzled me was the front stretcher with its double baluster or opposing pears. When I give talks, I point out that one of the defining features of a local rush-seated chair is that the front stretcher always has a single bulb in the centre so it became evident that I needed to see this chair for myself.

A few weeks later, I took my portable photographic studio to a small village on the edge of the Wolds (which I had never visited before) and found the church open. Like so many churches in this part of remote Lincolnshire, it is not used for regular services anymore though they are often open in the daytime. I found the chair next to the pedal organ in a very dirty, dusty and uncared for state, so I set about giving it a good clean and set up my studio to record it, the result of which you can see above.

Every component is of ash wood and original, generally in very good condition as it probably never gets sat on from one year to the next. I was unable to find anyone in the village who could give me any meaningful history of the chair .

I have no doubt that it was made locally and in future I shall have to modify what are the defining features of a rush-seated chair that was produced in the county.  Yet another example of the exception which proves the rule!

© William Sergeant 2017 and 2020

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair with 4 ladders, domed with downward shaping, straight backpoles with button finials and tapered feet, turned front legs morticed into the seat frame, with pad feet, rushing bars, front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double rear and side stretchers

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair with 4 ladders, domed with downward shaping, straight backpoles with button finials and tapered feet, turned front legs morticed into the seat frame, with pad feet, rushing bars, front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double rear and side stretchers WS 20

This chair shows all the hallmarks of a simple rush seated ladder back chair made in Northeast Lincolnshire, in good usable condition and probably 150 years old. Very few people know anything about these chairs and I recently (2012!) found this one on eBay and paid less than £4 for it. As with all these rush seated chairs it is made entirely out of ash.

© William Sergeant 2012 and 2020

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair: straight back uprights with tapered feet & flattened top finials; 4 ladders with lower indented shaping; square cornered cabriole front legs morticed into the seat frame, missing rushing bars; front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double side & rear stretchers

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair: straight back uprights with tapered feet & flattened top finials; 4 ladders with lower indented shaping; square cornered cabriole front legs morticed into the seat frame, missing rushing bars; front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double side & rear stretchers WS25

This is the very first rush seated Lincolnshire chair that I acquired; I found it hidden away in the back room of a second-hand shop in Greenwich. It was under other things and filthy but I recognised those distinctive front legs with cabriole shape and the turning on top. That was many years ago now and I am so pleased that I bought it. I think this is at least 200 years old; it has been made with a lack of sophistication and naivety that would indicate an early crude country chair - but what charm and presence!

© William Sergeant 2012

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair: straight back uprights with tapered feet & flattened top finials; 4 ladders with lower indented shaping; turned front legs with pad feet morticed into the seat frame, missing rushing bars; front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double side & rear stretchers

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair: straight back uprights with tapered feet & flattened top finials; 4 ladders with lower indented shaping; turned front legs with pad feet morticed into the seat frame, missing rushing bars; front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double side & rear stretchers WS 23

Compare this Lincolnshire rush-seated side chair with WS 22 and WS21 below; there are so many things in common that these are undoubtedly made by the Ashton/Green families in North Lincolnshire. These do appear with much more regularity on the market and I have lost count the number of times they are described as Lancashire chairs. No, no, no, as a former Lincolnshire-born Prime Minister might have said. Look and learn! 

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back rocking chair: straight back uprights with flattened top finials; 4 ladders with lower indented shaping; turned front legs morticed into the seat frame, rushing bars; front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double side & rear stretchers WS 21

They are elegant well made vernacular furniture, skilfully made after many years of honing the design, cheap and light weight but brilliant survivors. They would have been on the market of their day as a cheaper alternative to Windsor chairs and many thousands of cottages in the East Midlands would have had these beautiful chairs to sit on.

© William Sergeant 2012 and 2020

Peter Tree discovering a front leg made from birch on a Lincolnshire rush-seated side chair

WS 60

The pair of chairs which appear in WS 59 had some wood in the front legs that I didn't recognise - one of the hall marks of a Lincolnshire rush seated chair is that they are invariably made out of ash. So the only thing to do was to pay a visit to my good friend Peter Tree: after some discussion in which we ruled out most woods we could think of Peter found his eyeglass and on closer inspection of the grain he established that the wood in question was in fact birch. It's not at all common in vernacular chairmaking to use birch in the UK but chairs that were imported from Scandinavian countries often were.

In July 2014 I was able to get Adam Bowett to look closely at this chair and he confirmed that it was in fact birch wood in the front legs.

© William Sergeant 2012

Update: further research has revealed that a number of Caistor chairs have birch components, including birch seats.  Since birch does not grow to seat-size dimensions in the UK we did a little more hunting and discovered that there were importations of American birch, which grows to a greater diameter, during the 19th century and quite possibly before that. Instances of birch cargos coming into the port of Hull have been found in advertisements in UK newspapers.

© William Sergeant and Julian Parker 2020

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair with 4 domed ladders, straight back poles with tapered feet, with Lincolnshire front stretcher, double rear and side stretchers, rushing bars, turned front legs with vase feet morticed into the seat frame

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair WS 186

About five years ago I was sent some photographs of two rush seated ladder back chairs that were in a house near to Spilsby. One of them was identical to the chairs in WS 59 and it is of the type that I come across quite regularly. I have been able to trace these sorts of chair to southeast Lincolnshire and I am confident that they were made by the Spikins family of chair makers in Boston and Spalding. The other chair - pictured above - had straight front legs and a front stretcher with the same pattern as the rocking chair in WS 120. Again, I believe that these sorts of chairs come from the southeast Lincolnshire: indeed the rocking chair came out of a junk shop in Bourne.  So the fact these two chairs appeared in Spilsby, an area of the county where I would only expect to find the cabriole front legged chairs like WS 157, got me wondering if I had got my origins of these chairs wrong.

It was after my talk in Spilsby in the spring of 2017 that these two chairs were brought along to my chair surgery open day. I was able to photograph them both and to inquire into their provenance. Their tale was intriguing.

Throughout the nineteenth century there was a successful banking business in Lincolnshire called the Garfit, Claypon & Co Bank that had at one time ten branches throughout the county. In 1891 it merged with another company which was later absorbed into Lloyds. It was at that time when Bartholomew Claypon Garfit - a partner in the business - sold his large house near Boston to buy a large hunting estate near to Spilsby, bringing all his furniture with him. In subsequent years this estate was broken up and part of the furniture found its way into the ownership of a descendant close to Spilsby. It was that family that had brought along these two chairs for me to see.

So my belief that these types of chairs were made in the Boston area was once again re-inforced by the finding out the provenance of them in Spilsby which definitely showed that their history could be linking to the Boston area over 100 years ago.

© William Sergeant 2017 and 2020

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back child's chair compared to ladder back rocking chair and ladder back side chair

WS 120: L-R WS 108 child's rush-seated chair, WS 42 rush-seated rocking chair of small proportions, and WS 59 RH full-size ladder back with pad feet

The child's chair is already featured in WS 108 but is compared here to two other chairs; it has replacement rushing bars but is the most delightful example of Lincolnshire regional furniture. The rocking chair with the missing lower ladder is also pictured elsewhere at WS 42. The full-sized rush-seated side chair on the right, from WS 59 is the most common design that I come across. While there are obvious design features that unite these three chairs,  there is also the fact that all have iron pins driven through from the back to secure the ladders into the back upright. Besides that all have faint scratch rings on the back legs to aid in their construction. All this leads to me to have no doubt that they all came from the same workshop.

© William Sergeant 2020

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chairs x 4, with straight backpoles with tapered feet & button finials, 4 ladders, domed with downward shape, rush bars, rush-seated, Lincolnshire front stretcher, double rear stretchers, double side stretchers, turned front legs & pad feet

WS 68 Lincolnshire rush-seated chairs, probably made by Ashton/Green

These four identical chairs appeared as one lot at the auction house in Ossett, South Yorkshire. They are in excellent condition with virtually no wear to the legs or stretcher at the front: they were sold to me for very little as no one else was interested in them. This design of Lincolnshire rush-seated chair is by far the most frequent; I would say that 50% of those I see are of this design; elegant, sturdy and beautifully crafted. I didn't keep these chairs but was happy to pass them on to a keen collector of all things from Louth as they were probably made by the Ashton/Green families around Louth. He also wanted to take Mr Muggins, the cat, but he is very valuable to me as he is in charge of vermin control around the farm buildings and I would not let him go!

© William Sergeant 2019

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair, with straight backpoles with tapered feet & button finials, 4 ladders, domed with downward shape, rush bars, rush-seated, Lincolnshire front stretcher, double rear stretcher, double side stretchers, cabriole front legs & pad feet WS 66

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair WS 66 

This is one of 4 identical chairs that were put up for sale at Criterion Auctions in Wandsworth; from the picture I guessed they were from Lincolnshire but the legs were not easily made out. It was not until several weeks later when they were delivered that the full extent of what I had bought became apparent. They are excellent chairs of a good age with front legs that I had not seen before and they do not appear in Dr Bernard Cotton's The English Regional Chair.  However, after I sent some pictures to Dr Cotton, he pointed out to me that the leg design is similar to the chair which was made about 1740 depicted on the front cover of his book which represented the height of fashion at that time. Perhaps the makers of this chair were using similar design features from more upmarket Windsor chairs on their humble chairs to raise the profile of them. This design also closely resembles that found on the chairs made by the cabinetmakers and chairmakers from Philadelphia in the early 18th century. Bearing in mind that the first Pilgrim Fathers left England from Boston in Lincolnshire it is perhaps not surprising that they may share a common heritage.

WS 65 Lincolnshire rush-seated chair legs compared

The left hand leg is from the chair in the photograph above and the other is from a classic Ashton/Green Lincolnshire rush-seated chair. Both are referred to as cabriole in shape and have turnings at the top but the left hand one has been shaped into an elegant style complete with a turned pad foot.

© William Sergeant 2019

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair: straight back uprights with tapered feet & flattened top finials; 4 ladders with lower indented shaping; turned front legs of birch with pad feet morticed into the seat frame, with rushing bars; front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double side & rear stretchers

WS 60 Peter Tree, chair maker, discovers birch front legs

The pair of chairs which appear in this post had some wood in the front legs that I didn't recognise - one of the hall marks of a Lincolnshire rush seated chair is that they are invariably made out of ash. So the only thing to do was to pay a visit to my good friend Peter Tree: after some discussion in which we ruled out most woods we could think of, Peter found his eyeglass and on closer inspection of the grain he established that the wood in question was in fact birch! It's not at all common in vernacular chairmaking to use birch in the UK but chairs that were imported from Scandinavian countries often were. In July 2014 I was able to get Adam Bowett to look closely at this chair and he confirmed that it was in fact birch wood in the front legs.

© William Sergeant 2019

The Elusive Turnpin Chair - A Lincolnshire rush-seated chair by any other name would smell as sweet

William Sergeant  long ago remarked to me that no one could confidently identify a ‘pin’ chair, also known as a ‘turn-pin’ chair. These chairs and their makers are something of a late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century mystery. An idle search in the British Newspaper Archive during some Windsor chair research turned up Nicholas Allen of Boston, chair and spinning- wheel maker, who placed two advertisements for pin chair-makers in the Stamford Mercury on 6 August 1790 and 10 June 1803. Could the archive shed further light on pin or turn-pin chairs and their makers?  The resulting research was published in the Journal of the Regional Furniture Society.

The most important and illuminating advertisement read:

26 June 1812 Stamford Mercury: High-street, Boston. Matthew Bacon for William White deceased. To Chair-makers, Cabinet-makers, Wheelwrights, &c. To be SOLD by AUCTION By MATTHEW BACON, On Friday the 3d day of July 1812, on the premises of the late WILLIAM WHITE, Chair-maker, HIGH-STREET, BOSTON; ALL the STOCK in TRADE; consisting of upwards of 400 ash poles, 2,250 feet of ash, elm, and wainscot, 50 camp poles, 60 bed sides and ends, a quantity of pin chairs, a large quantity of stuff ready turned, a quantity of mats and rushes, 2 benches, blocks, turning-frame, tools &c. &c. N.B. The wood being all dry, is well worth the attention of the public. Credit will be given for all bargains above forty shillings, on approved security, to January the 20th, 1813.

That, together with the rest of my research, may be found here.

© Julian Parker 2019

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair: straight back uprights with tapered feet & flattened top finials; 4 ladders with lower indented shaping; turned front legs with pad feet morticed into the seat frame, with rushing bars; front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double side & rear stretchers

WS 54 Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair

There is a similarity in construction marks to WS 87, WS 70, WS 52 and WS 37.

©William Sergeant 2019

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair: straight back uprights with tapered feet & flattened top finials; 4 ladders with lower indented shaping; turned tapered front legs lower ring morticed into the seat frame, with rushing bars; front stretcher with turnery not from Lincolnshire, double side & rear stretchers

WS 52 Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair

I bought this one at the auction house in Market Harborough: take a good look and you will see that the front stretcher doesn't look right. There was other rush seated chairs at the same auction consigned from the same vendor with the same front stretcher but not from Lincolnshire. I think this chair had its original stretcher broken and one was robbed off the other chairs. There is a similarity in construction marks to WS 87, WS 70, WS 54 and WS 37.

©William Sergeant 2019

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair, straight back uprights with tapering feet terminating in a plain narrow stay rail with 4 plain domed ladders, straight front legs with reduced pad feet morticed into the seat frame, front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double rear and side stretchers

WS 37 Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair

Lincolnshire rush seated chairs are usually made to the most utilitarian design, just one step up from a stool but take a close look at these front legs: the person who turned them was skilled in design and manufacture; the rings, coves and quirks are crisply executed with the pad feet expertly made. Local vernacular furniture with more than a hint of sophistication.

There is similarity in the construction marks on this chair to WS 87, WS 70, WS 54 and WS 52.

©William Sergeant 2019

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back rocking side chair, straight back uprights with tapering feet flattened top finials; 4 ladders (1 missing) with lower indented shaping; turned front legs with pad feet morticed into the seat frame, with rushing bars; front stretcher with turnery found in Lincolnshire, double side & rear stretchers

WS 42 Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back rocking chair

WS 43 detail of front stretcher of Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back rocking chair

Of surprisingly small proportions but not a child's chair, in excellent condition except that it's missing the lowest ladder (there should be 4 not 3 as shown) with original rushing and seat edge trims. The front stretcher is like no other I have seen but a cracking little bit of rural Lincolnshire furniture none the less.  The front stretcher turning may also be seen on WS 70.

©William Sergeant 2019

Bar top Lincolnshire rush-seated side chair, straight back uprights with tapering feet terminating in a plain narrow stay rail with 4 plain domed ladders, straight front legs with reduced pad feet morticed into the seat frame, front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double rear and side stretchers

WS 70 Bar top Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair

Another chair from the collection of John Boden, in lovely condition and very similar to chair NE211 on p.158 of Dr B D Cotton's The English Regional Chair (1990). One of a dining set of 4 side chairs and 2 carvers. The front stretcher is closer in design to chair WS 42 than any of the other Lincolnshire chairs.  There is a similarity in construction marks to WS 87, WS 54, WS 52 and WS 37.

©William Sergeant 2019

Bar top Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair, straight back uprights with decorative shaped stay rail with lower indented design, 4 ladders, same lower indent, straight front legs with reduced pad feet morticed into the seat frame, front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double rear and side stretchers

WS 87 Bar top Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair

This model of chair was recorded by Dr B D Cotton on p.157 of The English Regional Chair (1990): they are not at all common and I was so pleased to find this example at the Newark Antiques Fair. It's in good condition with recent professional re-rushing but lacking its seat edge strips.

One of the benefits of collecting these Lincolnshire chairs is that after gathering a number together it is possible to see similarities emerging; there are are little construction marks that are only apparent on very close inspection and they appear on this chair along with numbers WS 54, WS 52, WS 37 and WS 70 . There is good evidence that they came out of the same workshop.

© William Sergeant 2019

Three Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back chairs compared:

WS 196: L-R WS 11, WS 195 and WS 59 side by side

Firstly, an apology for the slightly unsophisticated picture but it will serve to illustrate the point that I want to make.

The middle one is of a pair which appears at No 195; the RHS of the three is by far the most common Lincolnshire rush seated chair that I see: they have the appearance of being made in the first half of the 19th century; there is a pair on this site at No 59, many of which have a provenance back to the south of the county and I am certain that they were made by the Spikins families in Boston and Spalding. The LHS appears at No 11.  I have a provenance from the previous owner that goes back nearly a century and is associated with the Sleaford area. I just wonder if it was made in that town by the family of Hugh and Ann Mason. I know of only one other and that is in a village near to Spilsby.

It is immediately obvious that the front stretcher of each is identical and the pattern of the other stretchers is the same. The front legs are similar but have notable differences to make them distinct from each other. The middle one has only three back supports and the whole is strengthened by a top rail. These are the explicit design features that suggest a local pattern. What is not visible from the above picture are the implicit construction marks. All of them are exactly the same in having shallow incised rings to the back legs to aid in the drilling of the holes and all the back supports are morticed into the back legs and secured with thin metal pins. I have no doubt that the makers of these chairs were all apprenticed to workshops in the county of Lincolnshire and there they learned the same techniques for manufacturing this pattern of a chair while placing their own individual subtle design features.

© William Sergeant 2019

A pair of Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chairs: straight back uprights with tapered feet & flattened top finials; 4 ladders with lower indented shaping; turned front legs with pad feet morticed into the seat frame, with rushing bars; front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double side & rear stretchers

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chairs WS 59

Pictured above is one of a pair of rush seated chairs that I purchased at the Newark Antique Fair during August 2012. I have no doubt that they were made in Lincolnshire; they have all the features that I would expect: straight back legs, mainly made of ash wood, a flat seat with the rushing bars let into the side of the legs and the distinctive turned front stretcher that is used by so many Lincolnshire makers. There is no name stamp but this model is the most common of all the rush seated chairs that I find associated with the county. It even has the pieces of wood (called slips) to protect the rushing where it folds over the rushing bars. It has the appearance of being made during the mid Victorian period. It is not uncommon to find them in the south of the county and this leaves me in no doubt that they were produced by the Spikins family in Boston and Spalding.

Pair of Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chairs WS 59b

These common rush-seated chairs are compared with two others at No 196.