Wednesday, 02 March 2005

When the Cotswold & Vale Magazine's award ceremony for the prize winners of its "What Happened to Eof" competition was rained off, the staff of the Almonry were pleased to step in ...

"Three Chairs for the Almonry"
 

The always welcoming and helpful Almonry staff leapt to the rescue when the Cotswold & Vale Magazine presented prizes to the winners of  our Eof writing competition.

Plans to stage the presentation at the Bell Tower were hastily changed when the rain came, and the Almonry threw open their doors to us instead.

One of the highlights of the presentation was taking photographs of the beaming winners alongside one of our favourite exhibits, the history-evoking 1335-40 Abbot's Chair, which bears the Abbey's Arms.  Not only has the gleaming chair seen a lot of history, it's also been around a fair bit.  It was housed in the Almonry immediately after the dissolution of the Abbey in 1540 but Robert Cookes, Steward of the Rudge Estate in the 1740s, took the chair to his house in High Street when the Almonry became an alehouse.  Both the chair and the house passed to Cooke's son-in-law, William Baylies in whose garden it was seen in 1757.  He sold the chair in 1764 to a Mr Beaufoy, who took it to Lambeth.  Then it passed to a Mr Biddle of Wycomb and from him to Sir Thomas Baring who, in 1835, gave it to Edward Rudge of Evesham, neatly squaring the circle.  Edward Rudge's great grandson, the late J.E.Rudge, returned it to the Almonry, where it has been ever since.