It's A Big Bed! And It's . . . Where?
ANNETTE ON THE ROAD Why Is A Big Bed in the Museum? And What Is It Trying to Tell Us (apart from, hello, I'm a big bed)?
How Long Is This Post? About 2,400 words, or 11 minutes
First, here's my truly crappy photo, for which I apologize. The other photos were better, except my family members photobombed them, so this is what we’re left with:
Yes, okay, I know the photo really sucks. I get that we can’t even tell that the bed is big.
I get that you might suspect I took this snapshot in a furniture shop showroom featuring the kind of fake colonial furniture that’s kind of unfashionable now.
And it gets worse:
Nobody famous owned this bed.
Nobody famous slept in this bed.
Which begs the question:
What is this bed doing in Britain’s distinguished museum of decorative art, the Victoria and Albert Museum (fondly known as the V&A) in London?
And why am I writing about it?
Give me a moment! Because if I just tell you the museum’s answer to that, I don’t think you’ll be interested. Please stick with me.
This is, no question, a very big bed. In fact, it was even bigger until meddling Victorians cut it shorter, so it’s not in original condition.
It’s almost ten feet across, which is very impressive unless we consider that the largest standard American bed, the California King, is six feet across.
Still, that is pretty darn big.
Allegedly, I learn, this bed could sleep up to four couples. Which, when you think about it, is a somewhat titillating claim. What are they all doing in bed together?
This bed dates to the late 16th century, when it lived in an inn. My thought, knowing a bit about 18th century British inns, and how they crammed in guests, almost always men, is that the bed was more likely to have hosted eight —or possibly many more — individual blokes who didn't know each other, and who just needed a sleep, but hey.
And where was this amazing bed first found? In a royal palace, perhaps? Nope. The bed was originally in a pub in Ware.
Ware? Where’s that, you say, no pun intended? Exactly!
Ware is an unremarkable town in Hertfordshire, the little county north of London. I grew up in Hertfordshire, and I have never been to Ware. Says it all.
But this is one key to why this, the Great Bed of Ware, is not just a big bed, but an amazing bed.
Indeed, the Victoria and Albert museum describes this bed as “one of the V&A's greatest treasures”.
But what do they know? They’re a bunch of art history nerds, not proper historians. I have very different reasons to be impressed, as I'll be happy to explain!
But first . . .
The V&A says this bed is important because, well, it’s big.
No, seriously. I’ll quote you the V&A website:
The spectacular four-poster bed is famously over three metres wide – the only known example of a bed of this size, and reputedly able to accommodate at least four couples!
Look at that exclamation mark! Look at their little curator hearts flutter! This historian yawns. That’s nice,my arty-farty friends. Whatevs.
That's far less interesting than why this bed was made, and why we should we give more than the remotest toss about it.
While in London, I ran a scientific* test of this bed’s interest value to museum visitors.
*The Quality Control Gnome at Non-Boring House strongly objected to my use of “scientific”. I pointed out that since so many scientists have remained silent in the face of bizarre ideas taking hold among the public in the last few years, I might as well call myself a scientist too! The Quality Control Gnome wants you to know that I'm describing myself as “scientific” over his strongest objections, but then he always has held himself to the highest standards of integrity, which makes him quite the novelty these days. Come to think about it, maybe I’m lucky to have him.
Anyway, in the interests of “scientific” enquiry, ahem, I met my adult son Hoosen, Jr. and his girlfriend at the V&A (for lo, they were in London at the same time, and kindly consented to be seen with me). Scones and tea may have been promised if they would allow me to show them something at the museum!
I led this obliging young couple through the halls of the V&A, past many fascinating objects. Finally, I presented them to the bed, declaring “Behold, the Great Bed of Ware!”
These polite young people agreed that the bed was big. And then they looked baffled. I suddenly felt that I might have, er, embarrassed them. Oh, dear. Oops.
I explained that this is probably my favorite object in the whole massive museum.
So I told them the story about the bed that I think the V&A needs to emphasize.
In fairness, the V&A does mention the bed's primary purpose in its materials. But I think this story is much more important than stating the bleeding obvious (it’s a big bed!) or rambling on about the woods that were used, the exact dimensions, the design, etc.
In a nutshell, the Great Bed of Ware was a tourist attraction in Shakespeare’s day, and has been ever since. But you don’t come here to Non-Boring History for clickbait or trivia! And if you have just popped in for that, please calm yourself, pour some tea or coffee, settle into a comfy chair, take a deep breath, and let me remind you of the pleasures of those times before we all became phone addicts, and lost our collective minds.
So. How could this bed have been a tourist attraction? I mean, the Ware Tourism Office lay far in the future. Indeed, it still lies in the future, so far as I know: Nobody goes on holiday to Ware.
Although after reading about Ware, maybe I should? I now learn that Ware has loads of old buildings, and Roman remains that include the skeleton of a Roman teenager, disrespectfully nicknamed “Ermintrude” after a popular puppet on 1970s British kids’ TV.
But let’s be honest: This is England, where you can chuck a rock and hit something Roman. Ware needs to do better to get the tourists in hordes. It always did need to do better.
In 1590, when Elizabeth I was Queen, and Britain’s American colonies amounted to two failed attempts in Roanoke, Ware’s main (only?) claim to fame for travelers was that it sat on the highway then known as Old North Road.
The Old North Road is not as well known as the other road headed north from London, called the Great North Road (today bypassed by the major route called the A1, which is mostly freeway). But the Old North Road is indeed older than its rival, having been a replacement for the Romans’ Ermine Street. And until it met up with the Great North Road, well north of Ware, the two had to compete for travelers.
Ware was, in short, a pit stop on a lesser main road. Californians can now think of someplace on the 99 hoping to draw traffic from the I-5.
And every inn (hotel/pub/restaurant ) in Ware (where?) had to compete not only with establishments in other towns, but with its rivals in Ware to feed and lodge passing travelers, especially during slow travel times, like winter.
Enter the Great Bed of Ware. It was, in American terms, a roadside attraction. Not a destination, but a reason to choose Ware’s White Hart Inn for your dining and accommodation needs going north!
The White Hart Inn’s name? A hart is a male deer, unlike a female deer, cue Julie Andrews. Its owner commissioned this massive bit of bedroom furniture from a local carpenter around 1590. Imagine the conversation between innkeeper customer and craftsman!
Sorry, how big did you say you want this bed? What? You're pulling my leg, aren't you, sir?
The bed’s purpose? To give the White Hart an edge over its neighboring rival hotels n Ware, and yes, beyond. Come see the world’s biggest bed, folks! Better, come sleep in it! Only in Ware! Well worth the detour!
And if you did stay the night in this humongous bed? You could scratch your name on the bedposts, or leave a wax seal (provided, at cost I will guess, by the inn) on the bedframe, to show the world that you, yes, you had slept there! Hey, that was the nearest thing to Instagram in 1590.
A brilliant bit of hotel marketing. That’s what the Great Bed of Ware was.
And it had an impact that echoes to the present day, and perhaps especially in America.
The Great Bed of Ware is an ancestor of South Carolina’s hilarious South of the Border tourist trap. It's a root of the novelty hotels on “iconic” Route 66, which I wrote about last year:
And more recently, the Great Bed of Ware’s home eventually helped lead to the the revived 1950s motels I've been reporting on in Road posts at NBH, everywhere from Monterey on the northern California coast, to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, to Roanoke, Virginia. These motels’ owners have spruced them up, and colorfully themed them, to provide eccentric alternatives, in small towns on scenic backroads, to the very boring (and increasingly shabby and poorly run) chain hotels on the nation’s freeways.
But the Great Bed of Ware has a claim that no modern hotel attraction will ever be able to make: It was mentioned in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.*You don’t get better advertising than that in 1601!
*Sir Toby Belch urges his drinking buddy Sir Andrew Aguecheek to write a forceful letter to the servant (!) with whom he's competing for the attentions of Sir Toby’s niece:
“Taunt him with the license of ink. If thou “thou”-est him some thrice, it shall not be amiss, and as many lies as will lie in thy sheet of paper, although the sheet were big enough for the bed of Ware in England, set ’em down. Go, about it. Let there be gall enough in thy ink, though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter.”
From Tourist Trap to Revered Art
How did the Great Bed of Ware get from the White Hart Inn to the Victoria and Albert Museum? The bed took quite the journey of its own.
The White Hart, having apparently moved onto a new marketing campaign after a couple of hundred years of bed-centered promotions, eventually sold the bed to a neighboring Ware inn, the Saracen’s Head.
The Saracen’s Head’s owners, recognizing that the bed was now very old indeed, eventually offered it to the new V&A Museum in the mid-19th century, in the year the American Civil War ended.
But in 1865, the V&A snottily turned down the Great Bed of Ware as “a coarse and mutilated relic” and not “appropriate” to its fancy new museum.
Seriously. I had no idea until now that snotty people had weaponized the word “appropriate” quite so long ago. Fascinating.
Five years later, in 1870, the Saracen’s Head finally sold the Great Bed to a local landowner in Ware, who made it an attraction in his new Pleasure Garden. Pleasure Gardens were the ancestors of theme parks. This was a park with built-in attractions and entertainments. Like an enormous bed.
There the bed stayed, until 1931, when the V&A, under the management of a new generation, finally saw its value as a decorative arts object (it’s old! it’s big!) and gave it a new home.
Now, my job is to persuade us to think about history, not just art history. As a trained historian, I know objects are far more interesting to the public when they have stories attached to them.
That's why I think the museum needs to celebrate the Great Bed of Ware for what it really was in its own day. It was a very clever and creative, and very successful marketing gimmick. And it still has lessons for tourism entrepreneurs today, hundreds of years later: If you build it, they will come.
The Great Bed of Ware in Rhyme!
We have an extraordinarily talented bunch of Nonnies (paying NBH supporters, bless, because writers cannot live on free subscriptions) One such is SuperNonnie (NBH patron) Dr. Julia Griffin.
SuperNonnie Julia is Professor of English at Georgia Southern University, Brit, and Oxford- (and Cambridge!) educated expert on 17th century author and dead poet John Milton.
Yes, my description of Julia is daunting, now I think about it, but look at the posh company you can boast about when you're a Nonnie!
Hey, I know Julia best as a wonderfully good-humored, kind, and (obviously) generous soul. She is also an accomplished poet in her own right, but her work is of a very different sort from that of her beloved Milton.
Julia is an award-winning published writer of light verse. Light verse is best described as the kind of poetry we can all enjoy.
And here’s Julia’s take on the Great Bed of Ware. She clearly has more appreciation for its artistic beauty than does Laing, the stodgy historian!
Julia also does a wonderful job of imagining what it must have been like to share this giant bed with strangers . . . and yes, like every hotel bed of the time, unless reserved for the rare traveling lady or celebs, almost every hotel bed was shared among men, and usually strangers.
The Great Bed of Ware, by Julia Griffin
The Great Bed of Ware Was as cosy as clean. No bed could compare – You had to be there: It slept seventeen, With a good inch to spare! It was pull-as-you-dare At the risk of a scene If the folk were unfair That you snuggled between, In your bid for a share Of that bolster of hair And that sturdy couvert Made of sailors’ sateen Such as no one could tear Or demote or demean On the Great Bed of Ware – O you had to be there! – On the Great Bed of Ware, Just as cosy as clean.
Before You Go . . .
My long Tales posts, translating academic historians’ work and original documents into something accessible and entertaining, are the most important part of the crazy mix at NBH, and, yes, I am happily working on Tales posts!
But this is also summer. I have a hunch that this sort of heavier reading can wait a little longer as far as my dear Nonnies are concerned, as you sip frosty drinks on the beach. But honestly? I have no idea. So here’s a quick anonymous poll:
Next Up . . .
We find the pilgrims missing in Canterbury (and have a crash course in what Geoff Chaucer was on about, in case you're still traumatized from encountering him in class).
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A note to all those 21st century marketers who think they are the bees knees. There have been better marketers before you!
Thoroughly enjoyable, Annette, especially as we’re currently on the road motel- and hotel-hopping across the western U.S. and have yet to come across anything to remotely compare to that colossal, Shakespearean bed of Ware!