ST. AUGUSTINE’S CHAIR

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 8, 5 October 1943, Page 5

ST. AUGUSTINE’S CHAIR

LONDON, August 15. St. Augustine's chair, in which the first Archbishop of Canterbury, who died about the year 613. sat when he met the Welsh Bishops, is to be returned by Canterbury City Council to the church of Stanford Bishop, Herefordshire, from which it originally came. The decision Ims been made in response to a request from the Bishop of Hereford. forwarded by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The chair had been .in Stanford Bishop Church from time immemorial. and there is a curious «tory of its removal. It is related that the church was being repaired about 100 years ago, and the masons were about, to break up the chair for firewood, when the sexton begged it from them for a garden seat in which he might “sit and smoke his pipe of evenings under the old apple tree. There the chair remained in all weathers till it was discovered and bought from the sexton by a Dr. Johnstone, whose son. Dr. Cocks Johnstone, presented it to Canterbury about 1960. Since then it lias remained in the Royal Muspnin. The city council, us trustee of corporation property, has no power to dispose of the chair, but has agreed to its return to the church of Stanford Bishop on condition that it is kept in good repair and remains the property of the Canterbury Corporation.