The style of Continuous Arm Windsor chair is found in only one location in the English West Country: the village of Yealmpton, about six miles east of Plymouth.
Windsor chairs of more orthodox design (with arms formed separately from the back) were made throughout this area of England during the 19th Century.
Most of the existing examples of traditional Yealmpton Chairs seem to date from between the early and the middle 19th century. At about this time or slightly earlier, the design of Continuous Arm Windsor chair was being made in considerable numbers in the eastern United States.
As people from this coastal part of the West Country are known to have been among the earliest emigrants to leave for North America, it seems more than likely that there were contacts between the two communities, and that this unusual design was transmitted from one place to the other.
Apart from the continuous curve of the back and arms, there are other features of the Yealmpton Chair that are different from other contemporary English Windsor or stick-back chairs. The most noticeable of these is the way in which the legs and some of the back spindles are turned to simulate bamboo.
The design of the Yealmpton Chair, distinctly different from most other styles of Windsor chair, seems to have close connections with chairs made in the Eastern United States at around the same time.
It is reasonable to assume that Yealmpton Chairs were being made in the 1790s when bamboo-style turnings were becoming fashionable.
Despite this, there are no records of people in the village of Yealmpton being described as chair makers before 1812. From this date, however, parish records of baptisms show a number of villagers describing themselves as chair makers:
| 1812 | William Milman | |
| 1815 | Thomas Chambers | |
| 1817 | William Selley | |
| 1823 | Thomas Chaffe | |
| 1832 | Henry Chambers | |
| 1837 | Philip Husband |
As well as these, who described themselves as chair-makers, there were many other men who were described as carpenters, who may well have also made chairs.
By 1841, only the elderly Thomas Chambers was still recorded as working as a chair-maker, and the sons of some of the craftsmen listed above were pursuing jobs in neighbouring parishes, such as Newton Ferrers, as carpenters and wheelwrights, not having followed their fathers' trade.
The decline in chair making in Yealmpton the middle of the 19th century seems to have occurred as a result of the growth of factory production of chairs in the neighbouring cities of Plymouth and Exeter, as well as Yealmpton itself, their products usurping those of the rural makers.
Production of the similar continuous arm Windsor chairs in the Eastern United States (New York, Rhode Island and Connecticut), having started at a similar time to that in the English West Country, had ceased in the first few years of the 19th century, so the manufacture of such chairs at Yealmpton seems to have outlasted the US production.
Many examples of Yealmpton chairs made in the early years of the 19th century, such as that illustrated on the left, still survive in old farmhouses around the village.
In recent years, production of Yealmpton chairs, made in the same style as the original ones, has resumed. Jeromy Rowett, a craftsman with over thirty years' experience of making furniture and musical instruments in London, Salisbury and Devon, is now making traditional Yealmpton chairs in the village again. An example of one of the new chairs is seen on the right. For more information about these stylish chairs, click here or follow the 'current production' link below.