FOCUSTake a seatThe village skill of rush-seated chair making is alive and – despite lockdown and thanks to two talented young apprentices and an entrepreneur with a passion for quality – thriving in a newly created crafts workspace at Marchmont House in ScotlandIn February last year I visited Lawrence Neal at his workshop in the village of Stockton, Warwickshire. He had been making rush-seated ladderback chairs in this ramshackle space – formerly the village Co-op – since 1966 when, aged 15, he left school and started working alongside his dad, Neville. 

But when we met, Neal himself was nearing retirement. And with no one working alongside him (Neville having hung up his chisel in 1992), there was a chance he would be not just the latest but also the last inheritor of that classic English furniture-making tradition, one that stretched back directly to Herefordshire-based country chair-maker Phillip Clissett (1817-1913), although the Heritage Crafts Association dates this old village craft to the 17th century. After Clissett came his apprentice Ernest Gimson (1864-1919). An architect and furniture designer, Gimson would go on to become one of the prime movers in the Arts and Crafts Movement.

This is where Hugo Burge comes in. Passionate about preserving and popularising Arts and Crafts skills, the businessman talks of falling in love with these chairs while a pupil at Bedales in Hampshire – the school’s Gimson’s Memorial Library is full of the master craftsman’s work. And Burge has the vision, not to mention the means, to do so. This digital entrepreneur with a background in the travel industry is director of Marchmont Farms Ltd, which owns and manages Marchmont Estate and House in Berwickshire in the Scottish Borders. 

This digital entrepreneur with a background in the travel industry is director of Marchmont Farms Ltd, which owns and manages Marchmont Estate and House in Berwickshire in the Scottish Borders. 
It’s a 50,000 square-foot Palladian mansion, dating from 1750 and set in 3,000 acres, 40 miles southwest of Edinburgh. In 2018 it won the Sotheby’s Historic Houses Restoration Award.

It’s a 50,000 square-foot Palladian mansion, dating from 1750 and set in 3,000 acres, 40 miles southwest of Edinburgh. In 2018 it won the Sotheby’s Historic Houses Restoration Award.

But for Burge, Marchmont is considerably more than ‘just’ an outsized, storied, prize-winning family home. Reflecting his passions, not to mention the house’s historic collection of Arts and Crafts pieces and interiors, the 48-year-old is turning the estate into a centre of creativity, focused on what he’s called his Creative Spaces project.

‘This is an amazing, historic place, but it’s quite intimidating as a project,’ he says. ‘A place like this needs a sense of purpose, otherwise what are we doing here? Why are we putting effort into it – is it just for personal indulgence?’

Hence his building of an ‘ecosystem’ that is both protecting and championing arts and creativity, with the creation of multiple artists and craftspeople’s studios in the estate’s old stables and garage blocks. Still, Marchmont needs to, as he puts it, ‘wipe its face’, so Burge is also developing plans to create ‘an inspiring and exclusive retreat for executives and organisations. But I don’t want just any company coming here – I ideally want two or three companies who use us like a second home and are inspired by the creativity here.’
It is, he expands, ‘a business that needs to stand on its own two feet. And we want to make it accessible to the public. So, we have tours of the house and gardens, which are one thread, and we have an Arts and Crafts collection, which is a story that’s incredibly close to my heart.’

It’s that deep-seated passion that led Burge to Lawrence Neal, firstly to buy some of his work (his first furniture purchase post-university – Cambridge – was six of Neal’s chairs) and then, much more recently, to save his legacy.

In consultation with Neal and Robin Wood of the HCA, Burge funded an apprenticeship programme that began in 2018, two years before Neal’s’s retirement. When I was in Stockton, first recipients Sam Cooper and Richard Platt were up to their knees in wood shavings, metaphorically speaking (but also literally).

‘I appreciate the long history of the chairs,’ Platt, from Worcester, told me. ‘And as Lawrence is one of the last people making them, it makes sense to me to carry on.’

‘It sinks in now and then, when we get 200-year old chairs in for re-seats,’ added Cooper, a Londoner, ‘or see them up at Hugo’s in Marchmont. They last for generations.’

So, by early 2019, the next generation handover process was already afoot. The pair told me how the plan was that, on 1st March 2020, they’d move Neal’s workshop to Marchmont House. There, within the grounds of Burge’s Grade ‘A’ listed building, itself a palace of Arts and Crafts heritage, Cooper and Platt would carry on Lawrence Neal’s skills. They would become, as Burge told me last year, ‘a central anchor for a small community of makers which we’ll have at Marchmont. I’m very excited about building an Arts and Crafts-style community – with, at the heart of that, this Gimson legacy.’

Eighteen months on from our last encounter, Cooper, 28, and Platt, 25, are indeed installed at Marchmont – albeit having had some speed-bumps along the way.

‘We started moving up here in March with a view to opening on the 1st April,’ says Platt. ‘We got half our stuff up here, half was down south, and then lockdown happened. We ended up stuck here, basically, unable to do anything.’

‘The workshop was still under construction when we first moved up,’ continues Cooper, ‘and when lockdown happened, the builders had to stop work. So we were in a workshop without electricity for a month and a half, maybe more. Which was testing!’ But they ‘limped along’, using dummy wiring from their accommodation above the workshops to power some of their tools. Then, as lockdown began lifting, Neal’s workshop was packed up. How emotional was that for him?‘I’d say quite,’ replies Platt thoughtfully. ‘We didn’t exactly gut the place. He’s kept a fair amount of stuff, the various historical bits. We took the main equipment, like one of the lathes, the benches… but it’s still a functioning workshop for him to potter around in, carry on doing “hobby chair-making”, which I think is how he put it.’

Having been able to finally open their Marchmont Workshop on 1st July, the pair are sitting side-by-side in a space that is approximately five times the size of Neal’s. ‘But we’ve managed to fill it, somehow,’ says Platt. ‘Working from one end to the other, there’s woodworking, then assembling, then rush-seating, then finishing.’

Cooper explains that this building was originally a set of early 20th-century garages designed by Sir Robert Lorimer, commissioned at the time to make various alterations to the house. They have four garages in total, and are keeping one as a ‘clean room’ for use as a photography studio and storage for completed chairs.

The garages are part of a complex, also still under construction. A set of stables that wrap around their workshop in an L-shape will make space for another six studios. Beyond that is a shed to house ‘our massive sawmill’, says Cooper with a smile.

‘That’s where we’ll process all our logs. That was one of the big investments we made when we came up here: we bought ourselves a Wood-Mizer sawmill. At Lawrence’s the biggest tree we could tackle was about an eight-inch diameter. Whereas up here the biggest tree we’ve processed was about a two-foot diameter. And we’ve got some huge logs waiting to be sawn up,’ he adds with patent relish.

They’re still primarily working in the traditional chair-making woods of oak and ash, but are also looking to experiment with other trees, not least due to scarcity caused by ash dieback, the fungal disease that is killing ash across Europe. In Scotland, there are prolific amounts of sycamore and beech. Sycamore, Platt explains, is a traditional chair-making wood from years ago, but its use was phased out. So they’re looking to experiment anew. They’ve made one chair in beech already, a prototype to see if the wood bends sufficiently.
And it did bend quite nicely,’ affirms Cooper. ‘It’s a short grain structure so it’ll be interesting to see how it works in a full-size chair – we just did it with a low nursing chair. But we realised we need to let it sit a little bit longer after felling. We used it when it was really quite green, and it oxidised with some patchy oranges and yellows. But we think if we treat it a bit more like we treat oak, and we have it slabbed up into boards for a couple of months before we get round to using it, we’ll probably get a nice result.’

Their equally detail-loving patron and partner is clearly similarly thrilled by the potential for Marchmont. The arrival of the two apprentices ‘has been a beacon and hope and light over the past six months,’ Burge tells me now. ‘We’re all looking for silver linings in these times, and I have to say, seeing these guys start to work and to make chairs has been very uplifting.

And,’ he adds, ‘these guys are the heart, the epicentre, of our Creative Spaces.’ The first spring and summer at the Marchmont House Creative Spaces project might not have panned out as anyone envisaged, but by the time we speak in mid-September, Burge’s enthusiasm is undimmed. He’s about to announce the next studio tenants for his Creative Spaces project: fresco painter Julia Alexandra Mee is taking one space, while local stone sculptor Michelle de Bruin and letter cutter Jo Crossland are also taking a studio.
In September the Marchmont director also unveiled two giant commissions, Sky Boat and Dancing Tree, from sculptor Charlie Poulsen, which are installed in the courtyards. For Burge, ultimately, it all comes back to these crafts people, their skills and their imagination. 

‘I’m particularly excited for 2021, for ways in which everyone here can collaborate – maybe commissioning some projects that tie things together in an exciting and innovative way, but using traditional skills. I have this idealistic notion of a rural creative community, going back to Ernest Gimson and William Morris.’ Idealistic? For sure, in all the best ways. But pragmatic, too? Absolutely – the arrival of Sam Cooper and Rich Platt, the launch of their Marchmont Workshop and the continuation of the rush seat tradition they learnt from Lawrence Neal proves that.

‘It’s been quite a step up for us from Lawrence’s place,’ acknowledges Cooper, as he casts his eyes round his and Platt’s well-appointed – but already busy and dusty – workshops. ‘And the capacity to grow here is fantastic. In fact, we’ve actually got somebody joining us to do a month-long placement – she’s doing the [recently launched] Building Arts Programme with the Prince’s Foundation.’

Platt nods, the pair already considering the next generational handover. ‘We have to make sure this lasts past us.’ marchmonthouse.comWORDS CRAIG MCLEAN | PHOTOGRAPHS SAM WALTON