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

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, with plain stay rail attached to button finials of straight backpoles, 3 ladders, missing rushing bars, front stretcher with turnery commonly found in Lincolnshire, turned front legs morticed into the seat frame, with double side and rear stretchers

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair, with plain stay rail attached to button finials of straight backpoles, 3 ladders, missing rushing bars, front stretcher with turnery commonly found in Lincolnshire, turned front legs morticed into the seat frame, with double side and rear stretchers WS 34

This an excellent example of a simple well made rush seated ladder back chair made out of ash (with rerushed seat). Vernacular furniture at its very best, probably made by the Ashton/Green families of the Spilsby, Alford, Louth area. This unloved chair appeared at a local auction house and was lotted with other house clearance bits which I got for a pittance - it should have been acquired by the local museum which is only a few streets away from where it was sold. The town where I bought it: Louth.

© 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; 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

A pair of Lincolnshire rush-seated bar top ladder back side chairs: straight back uprights with tapered feet & flattened stay rail fixed onto prominent button turnings; 3 plain domed ladders; straight turned front legs, morticed into the seat frame, missing rushing bars; front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double side & rear stretchers

A pair of Lincolnshire rush-seated bar top ladder back side chairs WS 100

A few months after I originally found WS 86 I was lucky enough to chance upon these two near identical chairs at the Newark Antiques fair in April 2013; they too are similar to figure NE 214 at p. 159 of Dr B D Bernard Cotton's The English Regional Chair (1990), chair which he attributes to South Lincolnshire. They are both in excellent condition and came a house clearance on the Nottinghamshire/Leicestershire border.  Well-worn front stretchers mean they have been well-used: they have been re-rushed some time ago but without their original rushing  bars being re-attached.

© William Sergeant 2013 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 child's rush-seated armchair, straight backpoles w tapered feet, 3 ladders domed with downward shape, turned front legs morticed into rounded arm turnings, Lincolnshire front stretcher, single stretcher x 4,

Lincolnshire rush-seated child's armchair WS 77

I am grateful to Brian Gray for letting me take this picture of his very rare Lincolnshire child's rush-seated armchair. 

© William Sergeant 2020

Lincolnshire rush-seated bar top ladder back side chair: straight back uprights with tapered feet & flattened stay rail fixed onto prominent button turnings; 3 plain domed ladders; straight turned 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 bar top ladder back side chair WS 86

Many thanks to Brian Gray for drawing my attention to this chair at a south Lincolnshire auction in 2013; I was away overseas and he kindly bought this one for me in my absence. These bar topped chairs are not common, in fact it's only the third one I have ever seen*. It's also the most simple of all the Lincolnshire rush-seated chairs: those front legs are as plain as can be with no pad feet or off-centre turning involved. In Dr B D Bernard Cotton's The English Regional Chair (1990) there is one very similar on page 159, figure NE 214. One of my neighbours brought a similar one at a south Lincolnshire  auction several years ago and images appear below: WS 5, 6 and WS 7:

Lincolnshire bar top rush-seated chair WS 5

Lincolnshire bar top rush-seated chair - detail of bar top stay rail and button turning WS 6

Lincolnshire bar top rush-seated chair - detail of front leg turning morticed into seat WS 7

*by January 2013

© William Sergeant 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 child's originally rush-seated chair with 3 domed ladders front legs and underarm turned in one, turned arms, straight back poles with flattened finials

Lincolnshire child's originally rush-seated chair with 3 domed ladders front legs and underarm turned in one, turned arms, straight back poles with flattened finials

I have no doubt that this tiny child's chair came from the same workshop as that in WS 42. Just compare those front legs and the cross stretcher, there are even some scribe marks just beneath the front leg turnings which is typical of some  Lincolnshire workshops. However it has had a brutal past. It was once rush-seated but someone has taken away the rushing along with the rushing bars and replaced the seat with ply wood. The dealer still wanted a ridiculous price for it which I was not prepared to meet but at least I have recorded it here.  The chances are that I will probably never find another one like this.

P.S. I found out later that a dealer from Holland bought it, so it looks like it has gone overseas ...

P.P.S. UPDATE: By some strange quirk of fate this chair was offered for auction a few months later in Leominster! I wasn't going to miss it this time and I secured it for a very reasonable amount and was so pleased to add it to my collection. See WS 120 for comparison to other chairs.

© William Sergeant 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 armchair: 5 ladders with lower indented shape, straight back poles with flattened finials, front legs with graceful pad feet with upper turning joining the arms, Lincolnshire front stretcher turning, double side and rear stretchers

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back armchair WS 22

A Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back similar, but not identical, to one that appears at figure NE189 on page 154 in Dr B D Cotton's The English Regional Chair (1990).  The front legs and turnings are very similar but the arms of NE189 are straight, whereas those in this chair curve and terminate in a flattened rounded saucer shape. This chair is taller and consequently has room for an extra ladder.

© William Sergeant and Julian Parker 2012 and 2020

Lincolnshire Rush-seated Corner Chair corner chair, 3 straight backpoles, with pad feet, 2 splats, double Lincs front stretcher, double rear stretcher, double side stretchers, 3 part crest rail,

WS 69 Lincolnshire Corner Rush-seated Chair

This corner chair appeared in a Lincoln auction house in 2012. I studied it closely and was convinced it was a Lincolnshire chair the like of which I had never seen before. When it came to the auction someone else wanted it more than me, as I was left being the under-bidder. It was in fair condition and really should have spent the rest of its life in a museum in the county; I think I could search for many years and never see another: anyway we can all enjoy the image of it here. I sent a copy of this picture to Dr Bernard Cotton and he replied that this was the only Lincolnshire rush seated chair he had ever seen - it just makes me feel all the more foolish for not bidding higher.

© William Sergeant 2019

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

Lincolnshire rush-seated cherrywood ladder back side chair: straight back uprights with tapered feet & flattened curved stay rail with button finials; 3 pierced ladders with both upward & downward shapings; cabriole front legs with pad feet morticed into the seat frame; front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double side & rear stretchers

WS 47 Lincolnshire ladder back chair made of cherry wood

I haven't actually seen this chair but this picture was kindly sent to me by John Boram. It's a bit special: made out of cherry wood and with some fancy pierced ladders with a bar top. Beautifully crafted vernacular furniture.

© William Sergeant 2019

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back armchair: straight back uprights with tapered feet & flattened top finials; 5 ladders with lower indented shaping; turned front cabriole legs with pad feet morticed into the seat frame; front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double side & rear stretchers

WS 67 Lincolnshire rush-seated armchair

From the collection of John Boram and with permission to reproduce its image here. A very fine carver with some fruit wood in its construction.

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