A chair believed to be Sir Winston Churchill’s personal railway seat is to be auctioned in Northamptonshire.
The old and tatty chair is thought to be the seat which Sir Winston Churchill used in his personal Pullman carriage on journeys in his latter years as MP for Woodford and Father of the House, according to auctioneers.
Sir Winston retired from his second term as Prime Minister in 1955 but held his seat as Conservative MP for Woodford from 1945 up until his retirement at the 1964 general election, aged 89. He died the following year, aged 90.
He was the Father of the House for the last five years of his tenure in the seat.
The railway chair was brought into Towcester-based, JP Humbert Auctioneers, by an elderly man who said he believed it to be Sir Winston’s personal railway seat.
But there is no evidence to prove this to be fact beyond the man’s word.
Jonathan Humbert, from JP Humbert Auctioneers, said: “Sadly we have no evidence beyond the man’s spoken providence to show that this was definitely his chair but from research we have it all adds up.
“There is a label on the chair leg dated 1960 and stamped Preston Park, where the Pullman carriages were made. We believe Sir Winston had his own Pullman railway carriage so this could very well be the seat he sat in on it.”
Mr Humbert said there was always worldwide interest in items linked to Sir Winston. He said: “It would make a good conversation piece for any buyer. Could this be Churchill’s chair? What decisions were made in it?”
Three years ago Mr Humbert sold a battered settee, which once sat in Churchill’s Whitehall officers, for £7,500 to a buyer from South Africa.
The chair is expected to sell for between £300 and £400 when it goes under the hammer on September 27.
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