Local people invited to celebrate Wycombe’s chair making heritage at family fun day on Sunday, July 28, at Wycombe Museum from 11am-3pm.

Join the Chilterns Chairs Festival Family Fun Day and celebrate the chairmaking history of the local area with live demos, hands-on crafts and children’s activities. Meet Wycombe Wanderer’s mascot, Bodger, and find out how he got his name. Join a game of musical chairs, win prizes and watch craftspeople demonstrating traditional skills. You can even have a go yourself! The day is free to attend and there’s no need to book.

Chilterns Chairs is the final event in a series of festivals run by the Chalk, Cherries and Chairs Landscape Partnership. The Chilterns, and High Wycombe in particular, was home to chairmakers and bodgers – men who worked in the woods to turn parts and legs for chairs. Many people in High Wycombe have relatives who they remember working as bodgers or for one of the famous furniture manufacturers, Ercol, Parker Knoll and William Hands, who set up in High Wycombe, linking the local woods to the chair factories. The Wheelback Windsor is the chair most associated with the Chilterns and High Wycombe, made from beech, elm or cherry.

Museum Director Roz Currie says “We’re thrilled to be putting the spotlight on the fantastic chairmaking heritage of High Wycombe and the Chilterns. It is wonderful to have so many local organisations involved in this project – it really shows how much the area still feels connected to its chairmaking legacy”.

The Chilterns Chairs festival, run by Wycombe Museum, is running throughout July 2024 to celebrate the special furniture-making heritage of the Chilterns and its unique link to the local landscape and woodlands. Alongside the festival, Wycombe Museum are running an exhibition called The Art of the Chair until February 2025. It showcases the art and marketing of chairs, from Victorian salesmen’s miniatures to slick 1970s adverts. Discover the designs that made Wycombe chairs famous across the globe!

Wycombe Museum’s furniture galleries have also undergone an exciting redisplay for the Chilterns Chair Festival. See chairs from the museum’s collection that have never before been on display, alongside brand new audio, video, and interactive displays which bring to life Wycombe fascinating chair-making heritage.

Celebrate the stories of the chairmaking industry that grew from our local landscape into a thriving furniture production, which still continues today.

Find out more about our Chilterns Chairs Festival Family Fun Day: wycombemuseum.org.uk/events/chilterns-chairs-festival-family-fun-day