Town in Buckinghamshire, England
High Wycombe
In High Wycombe the mayor is weighed in public each year, and the crowd finds out whether he has put on weight. The town built its fame on chairs, and its football club still carries the name.
Key information
- County
- Buckinghamshire
- Nation
- England
- Known for
- Chair-making, the weighing of the mayor, Wycombe Wanderers
- Famous people
- Benjamin Disraeli (lived nearby at Hughenden), Lucian Ercolani, Sir Francis Dashwood (West Wycombe)
- Football clubs
- Wycombe Wanderers (the Chairboys), who play at Adams Park
About High Wycombe
The town that sat on its own chairs
High Wycombe built its reputation on something very simple: it made places to sit. The town lies among the beech woods of the Chilterns, and for generations that timber fed a chair-making trade that made the town's name across Britain. The classic product was the Windsor chair, with its turned legs and spindle back. Despite the name, it was High Wycombe's workshops that produced them in huge numbers. The trade began in the woods. Itinerant woodturners known as bodgers set up camp among the trees, turning chair legs and stretchers on pole lathes, which they powered with a foot treadle and a springy pole. They sold the parts to the chair makers in town, who assembled the finished chairs.
From bodgers to Ercol and Utility
As the trade grew, the work moved indoors and the town filled with furniture factories. Names such as Parker Knoll and Ercol became household brands. Lucian Ercolani, who was born in Italy, founded Ercol in High Wycombe in 1920. The company is still famous for its pale, curved elm and beech furniture, a style that turns up in British living rooms to this day. During the Second World War, High Wycombe's makers were central to the government's Utility furniture scheme, which standardised simple, durable furniture when timber and labour were short. Millions of homes ended up with pieces designed for a country at war. Bodgers were skilled woodland chair-part turners. The insult "bodger" comes from the much older verb "bodge", meaning to patch or botch work, which is a little unfair to the skilled craftsmen of the Chilterns.
Why the mayor steps on the scales
One of High Wycombe's best-known quirks is the weighing of the mayor. Each year the new mayor is weighed in public, and the result is announced by the town crier. The point of the ceremony is simple. A year of civic banquets was assumed to fatten a mayor at the town's expense, and the weighing was a way of checking that he had not grown rich on the public purse. If the mayor has gained weight, the crier calls "And some more!" and the crowd boos. If he has not, the cry is "And no more!" and the crowd cheers. It is a strange sight, and it is one of the oldest ceremonies still kept up in the town.
The Chairboys of Adams Park
Wycombe Wanderers were founded in 1887 by furniture trade workers, and the club's nickname, the Chairboys, has stuck ever since. They play at Adams Park, tucked into the hills on the edge of town. The club has produced some of the best giant-killing stories in English football. They won the FA Trophy in the early 1990s and took their place in the Football League in 1993, under Martin O'Neill. In 2001 they reached the FA Cup semi-final as a lower-division side, where they lost narrowly to Liverpool. In 2020 the Chairboys won promotion to the Championship through the play-offs at Wembley, the highest level the club has reached.
Secret bases, caves and a Prime Minister's house
High Wycombe has had a quiet role in some big chapters of history. Wycombe Abbey, now a girls' school, served as the headquarters of the United States Eighth Air Force's bombers during the Second World War, planning raids from a country house. Just outside town is Hughenden Manor, the home of Benjamin Disraeli, Queen Victoria's favourite Prime Minister. During the war it was used in secret to produce maps for bombing raids, under the codename Hillside. Nearby West Wycombe holds the Hellfire Caves, dug in the 1700s on the orders of Sir Francis Dashwood. They are said to have hosted his notorious Hellfire Club, and they are still a favourite for ghost stories. In the town itself, the Little Market House and the Guildhall give a sense of the market town that came before the factories.