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Bodging - a short history of this fascinating craft. In the recent past, the beech woods of England were populated by a group of tradesmen known as chair bodgers. The bodger was basically an itinerant woodland worker who specialised in making legs and stretchers, or bracers for Windsor chairs, with the craft dating back at least 500 years. 
Chair legs were the main stay of the traditional bodger's working life. Traditionally, many small chair-making factories only assembled chairs, buying in almost all of the chair parts pre-made, including the legs, stretchers and other turned pieces. The parts of the chairs were to be produced cheaply and to a high standard by bodgers who worked in the local woodlands. A pair of bodgers would buy a stand of trees in the woodland and after felling the trees, they would move into the clearing and live in a primitive hut which they constructed themselves from materials found in the wood (formerly they were rough shelters roofed and walled with chips and shavings from the woodland - today corrugated shelters may be used). Ideally, the beech trees had to be not too old, and also had to be straight grained. Trees used by the bodger for chair leg making were marked and felled during the winter months. Generally the wood was worked when it was freshly felled, or "green". By felling the right trees, gaps were left in the wood where new seedlings could grow, and by not cutting trees too young, they could be allowed to grow on and so extend the useful life of that particular stand of trees. The bodgers worked in the woodland throughout the year, turning wood into its finished form as close to the place where the timber grew, to avoid unnecessary labour costs and the expense of moving raw materials and waste. Working twelve hours a day, a pair of good bodgers in the early 1900s could produce legs and frameworks for 360 chairs, from the raw tree trunk to the finished article, in a five and a half day week. As the wood was worked 'green', the bodgers stacked the finished legs and stretchers in open piles in the woodland to season. The length of seasoning depended on weather conditions, as well as the greenness of the wood. When the seasoning process was complete, the bodgers would transport their finished products to one of the big chair-making centres, like High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, or Worksop in North Nottinghamshire, to sell them to local factories where the components were assembled. In 1914-1918, each man would earn between eighteen and twenty shillings a week, including any money that he made from selling waste wood for firewood, little more than a general labourer earned at that time. Not all bodgers, however, worked full-time or were self-employed. They were often employed by a local farmer and only worked at bodging between other jobs on the farmer's estate, including mowing, reaping or thatching. 
Today we have many skilled bodgers working at our events, allowing you to see this fascinating craft being demonstrated as well as offering you the chance to buy examples of the finished products. |
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