Heritage

In the mid-19th century the woods and valleys echoed with the strike of an axe, the rasp of the saw, the hum of a lathe and the shouts of men as they laboured to supply fuel wood and timber for woodware and furniture workshops, or worked at the craft of ‘bodging’.

Bodgers were men who worked in the woods using a foot-powered pole lathe to supply turned chair parts for the furniture workshops and factories in and around High Wycombe, an industry that came to define the region. By the middle of the 19th century, the Chilterns
and the town of High Wycombe were rapidly becoming the leading centre for chair making in Britain. The local woodware industry expanded at the same time and nearby Chesham became an important centre for the manufacture of wooden domestic and dairy utensils.

While the men worked in the woods, or in workshops and factories, women and children laboured at lace making for clothing, or straw plaiting for hats, both crafts for which the Chilterns gained a reputation for quantity and quality. Increasing demands for fashionable dress in the 18th and 19th centuries saw a rapid growth of these traditional crafts and, by the 1850s, thousands were employed in cottages and workshops.

The craft industries could be casual and insecure so in the summer, men, women and children turned to harvesting the fruits which became central to the local economy, for pies, jams, dyes, and medicines. The cherry harvest was often celebrated in the chapels with cherry pie suppers; watch this video by Stuart King to find out more.