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Target Shooting & Musketry Instruction >> Historical Events >> The Bisley Chair
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Message started by dbm on 03/16/05 at 11:30am

Title: The Bisley Chair
Post by dbm on 03/16/05 at 11:30am

The chair in which the winner of the Queen's/King's prize is carried shoulder high around Bisley Camp was presented to the NRA in 1883. At this time shooting was at Wimbledon; the first Bisley meeting not taking place until 1890.

Did this chair replace something of an earlier design? Or, is 1883 the start of the tradition the winner being carried aloft?

David

Title: Re: The Bisley Chair
Post by Bill_Curtis on 03/19/05 at 11:52pm

The Chairing tradition started in 1883 with the presentation of the Chair. It is still used for the formal part of the Chairing but the great night time 'booze cruise' when the Chair Party carried round the Winner to every Club House in recent years has resulted in three accidents damaging the Chair, the last time so seriously that the culprits were obliged not only to pay the expensive repair costs but also to make an exact replica of the Chair (its lighter colour gives it away) which is used for the 'booze cruise'. One famous Winner, Andy Tucker, now sadly dead, was a teetotaller and the imagination can visualise the sensation of being stone cold sober borne aloft by a drunken mob. Hardly surprising there had been damage, yet the old Chair had survived well over a century before this started to happen.