The Busby Stoop chair
A chair shown at Thirsk Museum and linked by legend to Thomas Busby, who was hanged for murder in 1702, though a furniture historian dated it to 1840.
Thirsk Museum gives the background. In 1702 Thomas Busby, a coiner and a drunk, killed Daniel Auty, his father-in-law. After his arrest and trial he was sentenced to hang. Once he was executed, his body was left hanging in chains on a gibbet at a lonely crossroads near an inn. The inn took the name Busby Stoop Inn, after the stoop, or post, that held what was left of him.
Countryfile calls the chair the Dead Man's Seat, and the Haunts podcast calls it Thomas Busby's Chair of Death. Countryfile says the chair's origins are doubtful: a furniture expert found its spindles were turned by machine, while chairs of the 18th century were shaped on a pole lathe. Wikipedia reports that a furniture historian put the chair's date at 1840, which is 138 years after Busby was executed.
The Haunts podcast has asked whether Busby may have been no more than a character in local lore.
"A furniture historian examined the chair and found it to have machine-turned spindles, whereas 18th-century chairs were made using a pole lathe. He dated the chair to 1840, 138 years after Busby's execution.[1]"
- Thirsk Museum - displays, Thirsk Museum
- Is this the world's most haunted chair? The chilling legend of the Dead Man's Seat, Freya Parr, Countryfile.com (2026)
- Episode 32: Thomas Busby's Chair of Death, Courtney Hayes, Haunts podcast