On New Year’s Eve we moved into our new house in Great Wilbraham, Cambridge. This is the start of a long held dream to build furniture professionally and teach chair making classes in a permanent, planned workshop.

I’ve been building chairs for about 15 years and started teaching woodwork and particularly chair making ad hoc a little while ago. Since then I’ve wanted a permanent base that I could set up for students to take short courses in the different chairs and stools I build.

We feel incredibly lucky to have found a house with two workshops that were used by wood trades for a couple of hundred years; one as a wheelwright’s shop and the other as a general carpenter to serve the local community. The buildings themselves require a lot of work; roofers will be first in and then I can start setting them up properly.

I will be spending the whole of this year working on the property, building chairs and going to shows to promote our courses. A mountain of ash is being delivered next week so there should be a few more blogs posts. In the meantime most of my woodwork is being done with a chainsaw to get rid of the dead trees leaning against the buildings!