Pews are out as they are replaced with the ‘Edmund chair’ at St Edmundsbury Cathedral

St Edmundsbury Cathedral will welcome their new, custom-designed and built chairs this week, ushering in a new era for the building following the removal of the Victorian pews.

The chairs have been specially designed for the Cathedral by the design team at Luke Hughes & Company.

Their aim is to produce ecclesiastical furniture that is compatible, dignified, supportive to the Liturgy, practical, long-lasting and, of course, subservient to the architecture.

The design for the “Edmund Chair” was in close collaboration with the Cathedral and the chairs are designed, when linked together, to re-create the strong horizontal architectural lines that were characteristic of the Victorian pews.

They will be stained to a mid-oak colour, also reminiscent of that earlier interior scheme. However, the new chairs will link, stack and can be cleared away on purpose-made dollies to enable the nave to be re-arranged or cleared altogether.

The chairs (like one pictured above) are made from European Oak. The reason English Oak was not used was that we have very little forest cover (only about 10 per cent in England) and this, combined with a landscape tradition associated with hedgerows and park trees, means that, unless the trees are very carefully managed, they do not provide the appropriate type of wood and the wastage is just too great.

Sustainability is an important part of this project, so the decision was made to instead use European oak, most of which has come from Ukraine where it is the most common deciduous tree – roughly 20 per cent of all trees there are oak, mostly grown in the north and west (particularly in the Carpathian Mountains, close to the Polish border).

Luke Hughes specialises in designing and delivering furniture for sensitive architectural settings.

Over the last 40 years he has designed and produced schemes for more than 60 Oxbridge colleges, 24 major private schools, 10 other UK universities, 24 cathedrals and five royal palaces.

Most of the projects are in buildings of the highest architectural quality. You can find Luke Hughes seating locally in The Apex and Theatre Royal.

Notable cathedral projects include Arundel, Bangor, Bristol, Canterbury, Chester, Chichester, Exeter, Lichfield, Salisbury, Sheffield, St Albans, St Paul’s, Winchester, St Machar’s (Aberdeen), St Giles (Edinburgh) and Cathedral of the Incarnation (Long Island NY).

Luke Hughes designed the clergy furniture on the Cosmati Pavement in Westminster Abbey, most publicly displayed during the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II and the Coronation of King Charles III.

The Very Reverend Joe Hawes, Dean of St Edmundsbury, said: “We are thrilled to welcome the new chairs to the Cathedral, and this is thanks to our New Chairs Appeal which allowed members of the Cathedral community to purchase a new chair for the Nave. We are incredibly grateful for our congregation and the way they have embraced this change.

“Chairs were part of the original design concept of Stephen Dykes Bower when he began as Cathedral architect in 1943 so to fulfil his vision for the Cathedral 80 years later is a great thing.”

The chairs are being installed following the removal of the Cathedral’s pews. Some of these were sold to the public before St Edmundsbury Cathedral teamed up with Rough Stuff to repurpose some of the larger pews into smaller pews and other items.

This ensured that as many people as possible got to take home a pew, as well as reducing waste and recycling as much of the wood as possible.

Rough Stuff are based in Hemel Hempstead and specialise in creating new, useful items from oak furniture that is no longer fit for use or sought after. They work with both ex-prisoners and those still in prison (with workshops inside their partner prisons) to up skill workers, through HACRO – The Hertfordshire Association for the Care and Rehabilitation of Offenders. They also help with the social rehabilitation of ex-offenders with assisting the set-up of their own businesses.