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# The back of St Edward's Chair is covered in inscriptions
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/spinka-trona-sviatogo-eduarda-pokryta-mnogochislennymi-nadpisiami/
- Published: 2023-05-07T07:34:17.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:36:38.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: London, Monarchies, Heritage, Mores

The back of St Edward's Chair is covered in inscriptions. They are no part of its decoration: they are the marks of vandalism to which the chair was subjected over the centuries. For most of its 700-year history it stood in Westminster Abbey like an ordinary armchair, with no protection, guard or barrier. I have read the recollections of people who saw the chair as late as the 1960s and 1970s: it simply stood behind an ordinary fabric museum rope, which could be stepped over without any difficulty, so that one could go right up to the chair, touch it and have one's photograph taken with it. It is known that among the choristers it was considered a merry tradition to creep up to the chair at night and sit in it, and we are speaking not of the eighteenth or nineteenth century, but of the second half of the twentieth. In the centuries before that, one could not only approach the chair and touch it with impunity, but also quite calmly carve a few endearments into it with a penknife.

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_8907@07-05-2023_10-34-17.jpg)