Sleep tight, advise parents all over the country as they kiss their children goodnight. Do they, or their yawning youngsters, ever wonder what they mean?
The expression arose with the pallet bed - a crude wooden frame beyond the dreams of most Britons until the economy stabilised after the Wars of the Roses in 1485. Ropes were slung from side to side to support mattresses filled with straw, horsehair or feathers (not to mention vermin, bugs and bacteria).
Ancient people slept on the ground. Cave-dwellers crunched up in heaps of leaves and twigs until some goose-pimpled primitive thought to drape an animal skin over the pile and use another as a cover. From there it was a short hop to stitching the skins together to make a mattress. And so to bed.
Wealthy Romans dozed and dined on ornate couches with sculpted legs and sides. Elaborate beds were a symbol of wealth and power throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. When people died, “the best bed” often headed their list of legacies.
In the centuries before, bedroom aristocrats were protected from prying eyes - and draughts - by curtains suspended from the ceiling. By the 15th century, these hung from the bed itself. The four-poster had arrived, usually topped by a massive wooden canopy or tester which turned the structure into a small room.
Not that it was always so small. The Elizabethan Great Bed of Ware, now in the Victoria and Albert museum, was originally 18ft by 12ft and able to accommodate 68 people. Made in 1590 for Sir Henry Fanshaw of Ware, it was bought in 1612 by the local pub to hire out to couples (several at a time) as a money-spinner.
The sweet dreams of the Stuarts were shrouded with taffeta, silk and hangings that matched the curtains of their state rooms. James II snored on a bed valued then at pound;7,000. But he was almost as likely as the local peasant to be sleeping on a nest of mice. Laws improving mattress hygiene were not passed until 1900.
Cotton mattresses became popular in the 1950s, and waterbeds were invented in the 1970s - when else? Interior sprung mattresses date back to 1871, courtesy of a German called Heinrich Westphal. Alas, his invention, which used steel coil springs, failed to catch on for another 60 years and he died in poverty. RIP Heinrich or, as they say in the trade, sleep tight.
Stephanie Northen
