PROVENANCE Boughton Monchelsea Place, Kent. The original medieval village church is within the curtilage of the Estate, and it is possible that the chest came to the house from this source. The history of Boughton Monchelsea Place is a long and varied one dating back to before the Norman conquest. By 1575 the then owner, Robert Rudston, had added the present East Wing and also two further wings bounding the courtyard. In the 17th century the house passed to the Rider family but during the latter part of the 19th century the house, though furnished was left largely unoccupied. In 1888 a distant cousin in America decided to lease the property. in 1903 Lt Col G. B. Winch took on the lease until his death in 1953 when it was inherited by his nephew Michael Winch who in 1960, bought the lease from the Trustees. Michael Winch published The History of Boughton Monchelsea Place in which it refers to "Flemish Chest, Oak, Late 15th Century". The chest was also categorised as an item of furniture which was in the house when Lt Col G.B. Winch came to live there in 1903. The chest remained in the same room until 1998 when the contents of the house was sold by Christie's (January 21st 1998).

CONOGRAPHY
The scene on the main panel appears to be taken from a popular narrative tale (as yet unidentified), representing an incident during a hunting party in which a lady sallies forth from a city to hunt deer with her hounds, whilst (top right) one of the hounds seems to attack a peasant woman. The style of carving is similar to that seen on ivory panels, mirror-cases and caskets of the period.

RELATED CHESTS AND PANELS
The chest may be considered in the light of a small group of loosely-similar oak chests and remnant panels (including a so-called "tilting coffer" depicting mounted knights tilting with lances; Roe 1902, 50-69). Particular attention should be drawn to chests at:
- Harty Church, Isle of Sheppey (tilting scene);
- York Minster (George & Dragon);
- Ypres Cathedral (George & Dragon); and
- The Gruuthuse Museum, Bruges (George & Dragon); Acc No 597.

Remnant carved panels are held in two British public collections:
- Victoria and Albert Museum, oak panel from Rufford Abbey, Notts. (George & Dragon; V & A Acc. No, W.82-1893?, ill Roc. 1902, 50 and Cescinsky & Gribble 1922, Vol II, 14).
- Victoria and Albert Museum, oak panel reputed to have belonged to Horace Walpoe at Strawberry Hill (scenes including the Coronation of the Virgin, the Annunciation and the Early Life of Christ; V & A Acc. No, W.15-1920, ill. ibid. and Tracy, 1988, 176-7, Plate 106).
- Museum of London, fragmentary elm panel (scenes from Geoffrey Chaucer The Pardoner's Tale; ill. Chinnery 1979, Figure 2:123b.)

The present chest shares considerable structural similarities with the chests quoted above, notably the use of clamped-front construction (all); the use of a dovetailed rail to link the upper ends of the stiles (Harty et al?); and the use of the repeated stopped-chamfer at York (Eames 1977, 146), Ypres (ibid., 146) and Harty (on the surviving internal till lid, by inspection). The quality of the carving is perhaps most closely related to chests at Harty, Ypres and Bruges; to the V & A "Walpole" panel and to the Museum of London "Chaucer" panel; though any putative relationship needs to be explored more closely.

REGIONALITY
There has been considerable discussion over whether the entire group is of English or Flemish origin, though this loose grouping is sufficiently disparate that they cannot be considered to share a common source or date. Modern opinion is much divided, though the consensus seems to be that those examples with rather static and less fluid carving could be English (V&A "Walpole" panel, Museum of London "Chaucer" panel), whilst the more eloquent carving is thought to derive from the Low Countries (York Minster chest, V&A "Rufford" panel). However, it has to be said that this interpretation relies less on conrete evidence than on an assumption that English medieval carving is necessarily inferior to Flemish. In the V&A Catalogue, for example, the Walpole panel (W.15-1920) is considered to be possibly English on the grounds of stylistic and iconographic parallels with other English carving and embroideries (Tracy 1988, 177) whereas the Rufford panel is omitted from the catalogue and pronounced as Flemish for reasons not stated (Tracy 1988, xxvii). The design of the Rufford panel is a virtual mirror-image of the York Minster chest, which Eames (1977, 146-7) also considered to be Flemish. Fred Roe argued that all the chests are English, and even indulged in speculation that the Ypres chest could have been captured from an English army that was turned back at the seige of Ypres in 1383, though his fourteenth century dating may be contradicted as dendrochronlogy becomes available for more accurate dating.

Flemish furniture was regularly imported into medieval England, where contemporary accounts frequently refer to "Flanders chests". However, it may be that such references are specifically to chests decorated with tracery carving, as in the case of the fourteenth century tracery-fronted chest in the church at Wath, near Ripon (Yorkshire), probably left to the church by the priest Christopher Best, whose will dated 23rd April 1557 bequeathed all his belongings to George Best excepe a Flanders Kyste (Temple Newsam, 1971, cat 5).

DATING

The group has generally been attributed within a date-range of c.1380-1450, based on a number of stylistic factors, notably the currency of the clamped-front construction, the costume of the figures, and the armour of the knights depicted on the related "tilting" chests (Roe 1902). Eames assigned a date of c.1380 to the York Minster chest in agreement with Roe (Eames 1977. 147), whilst the V&A catalogue gives a date of 1430-50 for its English (?) Walpole panel (Tracy 1988, 176). The latter range is now supported by recent dendrochronological tests* carried out on the present chest by Dr Ian Tyers of the Dendrochronology Laboratory at Sheffield University Research School of Archaelogical Science (corr. 03/09/99). Dr Tyers was able to secure results from three areas, the right-hand vertical stile and two bottom boards. The stile has a latest-growth date of 1431, including a good survival of 13 sapwood rings, which indicates that the first use of this plank is likely to be soon after 1431, say in the latter 1430's. The two bottomboards are derived from the same original tree and probably the same plank, with a latest growth date of 1434. Their sapwood horizon is not clear, but their first use date can be confidently conjectured within a broader range of 1435-60. If the sapwood of the base-boards can be identified more clearly, this may reinforce a closer dating of 1435-40. The timber in each case is Baltic in origin.
* Dendrochronology is the scientific dating of timber by the analysis of growth ring patterns.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Herbert CESCINSKY and Ernest GRIBBLE Early English Furniture & Woodwork, Waverley, London 1922.

Victor CHINNERY Oak Furniture, The British Tradition, Woodbridge 1979.

Penelope EAMES Furniture in England, France and the Netherlands from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Century, Furniture History, 1977.

Christopher GILBERT, Anthony WELLS-COLE and Richard FAWCETT Oak Furniture from Yorkshire Churches (Exhibition catalogue), Temple Newsam House (Leeds City Art Gallery) 1971.

Fred ROE Ancient Coffers and Cupboards, Methuen & Co, London 1902.
Charles TRACY Catalogue of English Medieval Furniture & Woodwork, Victoria & Albert Museum, London 1988.


Victor Chinnery
September 1999