St Edward's Chair - A History of the Medieval Coronation Chair and the Stone of Scone

There is one item of furniture that we will see prominently during the coronation next May and that is St Edward’s Chair, the Coronation Chair. Commissioned by King Edward the First to contain the Stone of Scone, the Stone of Destiny, most English and later British sovereigns have been anointed and crowned while seated on it. In this video I will look at the history and the significance of the chair, before moving on to look at the elaborate (mostly now lost) decoration of this iconic piece of seven-hundred-year-old furniture, focusing on the symbolism of it and how the chair and its decoration relates to a particular aspect of the wider furnishing of Westminster Abbey – and what that says about English kings conception of their office.