Refectory table
Monday 17 October 2022 Today I fixed a 400 year old elm and oak Jacobean refectory table for my friend Justin. The table had been acquired by his parents when they purchased Bookerhill farmhouse near High Wycombe. The table was too large to remove from the farmhouse so the vendors had simply left it behind. When Justin’s parents moved to Gaunts Earthcott Manor House his mother got a carpenter to cut 2 inches off the legs so she could get it out of the farm. She also had to remove the stretchers to get it into the new manor house. Once in its new location the stretchers were reattached and leg off-cuts put in a box of assorted bits of wood where they remained for the next 70 years. Justin’s parents have now died, the Manor house has been sold and I helped him to move the table to his new house in Lydney. We had to remove the stretchers again to get it out of the manor house. This was about a year ago. Today I was refixing the stretchers and fixing the original off-cuts to the bottom o