Antique Country Furniture 18thc Painted Pine "Chicken Coup" Settle.

I thought I had seen every type of furniture, until I saw this rare little survivor...it is known as a "chicken coup" settle....simply because it would have been in a country cottage, probably a farmworkers and in the evening he would have put his chickens under the seat and they would have been kept there by a slatted cage with a slatted door, which was all part of the settle...if you look at the pictures, you can see where the slats were fixed under the seat and would have come down to the floor and been fixed into the bottom stretcher ....the right hand side was part of the slatted door and note the hole in the front of the seat where it was locked....also I like the old hand made iron staple (each end), knocked into either side, so it could be tethered down....the bottom stretcher and the slats have been missing for sometime, but we are left with a very useful little pine settle with original paintwork and what a provenance..!

English. C1700-20.