High Wycombe's Chair Legacy Gets a Cool New Home to Explore!

High Wycombe, a market town in Buckinghamshire, has a long history of making chairs. In the late 1800s, it was known as the 'chair-making capital of the world. ' The town's football team, Wycombe Wanderers, are even called the Chairboys because of this history. In 1877, workers in High Wycombe made about 4,700 chairs every day. One of the most famous chairs from the town is the Windsor chair, which has a wooden seat with spindles and legs attached directly to it.

To celebrate and share this history, Wycombe Museum is opening a new site called the Chair Discovery Centre. The museum already has many chairs, but there is not enough space to show them all at the main building on Priory Avenue. The new centre will be located above the High Wycombe Social Club, a building with a unique copper roof and side panels. The Chair Discovery Centre will have almost 250 pieces of furniture, including many chairs that have been kept in storage until now.

Catherine Grigg, the museum's curator, says the new centre will have something for everyone who wants to learn about Wycombe's chair-making heritage. The centre will not only display chairs but also have archives, reference books, and study resources about furniture making. Roz Currie, the director of Wycombe Museum, is excited that the chairs will finally have a place where everyone can visit and learn. The Chair Discovery Centre is still being built and is expected to open in the summer. When it opens, visitors will be able to enter for free on regular open days throughout the year. This new centre will help people understand why High Wycombe is so important in the history of furniture making in the UK.