Footnotes

• Provenance: Taunton Castle,
  Taunton Castle, Somerset until 1873;
  Franklin & Hare, Taunton, Somerset by the beginning of the 20th century;
  Captain Bridges, Croyden Hall, Washford, Somerset;
  S.W. Wolsey, Buckingham Gate, London;
  Purchased by R.T. Gwynn 2 June 1947 for £375;
  R.T. Gwynn Catalogue Ref: F56
  Sold Sotheby's London, The Peter Gwynn Collection, 27 November 2001, lot 91.
  
  Exhibited in the Exhibition of Leathercraft, Army and Navy, Victoria Street, London SW1, 18 June - 7 July 1951, no.G.3
  
  The chairs offered here are part of the original set of twelve chairs that were removed or sold from Taunton Castle in 1873 when the Castle was acquired by the Somerset Archaeological Society. Traditionally they are thought to have been used in the Court over which Judge Jeffries presided at the 'Bloody Assize' at the Castle in 1685. The Bloody Assize followed the Battle of Sedgemoor and resulted in five hundred and eight rebels being sentenced to death. The chairs were still in the Taunton area shortly after the war when Mr Wolsey telephoned Peter Gwynn to notify him of their existence and in due course, they set off together to Somerset to acquire the chairs. The whereabouts of the remainder of the set is not known although a single chair from the original twelve formed par of the collection of the author Fred Roe, and is illustrated by him in Old Oak Furniture, 1905, pps.96, 296-7.

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Category: Furniture / Oak Furniture

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