The Waterloo Chair

As we approach the two hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, my eye has been taken by a remarkable and historic piece of furniture carved by Thomas Chippendale as a gift to the Prince Regent. This stunning item, with a provenance to set a Georgian's heart racing, is the Waterloo Chair. I was lucky enough to see it in the flesh, as it were, and it really did steal my breath.

Courtesy of the Royal Collection

As Wellington made his final, victorious advance at Waterloo, he did so from beside an elm tree that stood on a ridge overlooking the field of conflict. This tree became a place of pilgrimage for those who visited the site of the battle and as the years passed they took its bark and boughs, wanting a souvenir of the momentous events. Tired of these relentless battlefield tourists to his land, in 1818 the farmer who owned the tree decided that the only thing to do was chop it down, thus ending the pilgrimage once and for all. As plans were made to remove the tree, John Children, a librarian at the British Museum, purchased the tree himself and had it sent over to England and to the workshop of Thomas Chippendale the Younger.

Courtesy of the Royal Collection

Chippendale fashioned the wood into an ornate chair and, in February 1821, it was delivered to Carlton House as a gift to the Prince Regent. The chair is elaborately carved with images of Waterloo, as well as a relief of a lion crushing the French standard, and celebratory inscriptions:

The chair
Carved from the Wellington Elm
Which stood near the centre
Of the British Lines
On the field of Waterloo
Is Humbly presented to
His Most Gracious Majesty
George the Fourth

Courtesy of the Royal Collection

The Marquess of Wellesley, Wellington's elder brother, supplied a second inscription in Latin, which was accompanied on the chair by carvings of laurel wreaths and other signifiers of victory in the field of conflict.

A second chair was made from the remaining wood for Children's own use and, in 1837, he presented this to Duke of Wellington in recognition of the remarkable victory we commemorate this week. 

The Duke of Wellington's Waterloo Chair is noted in the Daily News, Wednesday, October 27, 1852

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