Leicester, Charles and family

Macclesfield, Cheshire; chair makers (fl. 1810–60)

Charles Leicester, a member of a chair-making family, is recorded at Chestergate, 1816–28, no. 18 in 1816 and no. 120 in 1828.

Until 1838 Charles is recorded as working without his sons but the census returns of 1841 show that two of his sons, William (b. 1816) and Charles jnr. (b. 1818) had joined him in the Chestergate workshop. On 17 October 1810 he supplied twelve chairs for Sir John Fleming for Tabley House, Cheshire. The chairs cost 7s each and the bill for £4 4s was settled on 9 November.

Leicester stamped a number of his chairs and three exist at Temple Newsam House, Leeds, marked ‘C. LEICESTER’. He produced a distinctive type of rush-seated ladder-back chair with a turned top rail, barrel terminals, knuckle jointed rails and ‘picking stick’ arms (a picking stick was an implement used on silk looms in towns such as Macclefield), (illus. Boram, Regional Furniture, (2004) figs 16,17,18, 19 and 20).

Other chairs are known with impressed marks ‘LEICESTER MACCLESFIELD’ and ‘W LEICESTER’. Listed in Slater’s Directory for 1848.

Source: DEFM; Agius, ‘Chairmakers listed in General and Trade Directories, 1790-1851’, Furniture History (1975); Boram, ‘The Short Arm Experiment’, RegionalFurniture (2004); Boram, ‘A Regional Perspective on the Innovative Development of Light Chairs, RegionalFurniture (2012).