Game Of Thrones

No downstairs cloakroom is complete without a wooden loo seat. Jane Wheatley investigates why burr walnut is always preferable to plastic when it comes to sitting pretty

IT’S undeniable that a glorious throne with a welcoming wooden seat makes us sigh with pleasure,’ writes Lady Lucinda Lambton in her classic book Temples of Convenience, which explores the development of the lavatory from the reredorter positioned over a hole in a castle wall to today’s Philippe Starck-style, wallhung pan with self-closing lid.

Here are beautiful mahogany commodes or ‘closed stools’ by Hepplewhite or Chippendale concealing chamber pots, ornate porcelain pedestals decorated with spouting dolphins or trumpet-blowing cherubs and the thunderbox—a water closet in polished-wood panelling, with a brass handle set into the side to operate the valve flush. Jonathan Swift built his own: ‘Two temples of magnifick size.’ There is the chaise percée—a chair with a hole in the seat—and thrones, huge to accommodate crinolines, with sides and lids in canework.

Whatever the age or style or the standing of its owner—from the humble two-seater privy at the end of a cottage garden to the ‘Optimus’ closet in the peeresses’ retiring room at the House of Lords—a lavatory could be relied upon to afford the descending bottom the comfort of landing on a warm seat made of wood.

That is, until the mid 20th century, when materials such as plastic and acrylic were quickly embraced by bathroom suppliers everywhere. By the 1970s, according to Lady Lambton, ‘lavatory and bathroom design were bereft of all interest and charm’.