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CRITICAL
THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE REALMS IN THE
SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY: A PARAMETER OF WOOD
AND FABRIC
Sarah Ann Robin, Lancaster University
Sarah Ann Robin is studying for her PhD, in history, at Lancaster University.
Email: robinsa3@exchange.lancs.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
This article is an exploration of the bed in the Britain during the seventeenth-century. Through a study of
different types of bed and a close analysis of court records, this paper concludes that the bed served as a space
of privacy and isolation, in busy, public domestic spheres. The bed was a haven of love, comfort and warmth,
but the privacy of wood and fabric also created opportunities for abuse and criminality, which will be
demonstrated in the second half of this paper.
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This is an exploration of the bed in Britain during the seventeenth-century. The bed existed in varying forms
and in different degrees of quality but the desire to have use of a bed was universally felt, and one can
cautiously assert that most people had access to a bed of sorts. 1 In England, couples bedded down in great
inherited poster beds, drawing the curtains shut around them. Servants folded out their collapsible beds and
made the hearth-stone their chamber, while in rural corners of Wales and Scotland, people climbed up ladders
into cupboard beds, or makeshift loft-spaces. In the winter months, a yeoman’s family, along with pet cat and
dog, climbed into their oak framed bed together, heaping fabrics on top, from around the house. In a lodging
house, two strangers shuffled nearer, in the pursuit of warmth. In a cellar apartment, an old widow crawled
under her fabrics, to sleep alone. Thus, bed-time was both more communal and individualistic than we now
know it to be, as the number and nature of bedfellows was dictated by circumstance and environment. Despite
the individualistic quality of households, the bed served a common set of practical functions: a place of rest, of
shelter, of reflection and of sexual intercourse. In addition, the bed performed essential social and emotional
functions: the curtains and woodwork were a domestic parameter; between a busy, public household, and the
bed, a space of privacy, rest and relative isolation.
Perhaps the most reminiscent type of bed from this period is the poster bed, and it is with this which we begin. 2
These were formed of a typically oak structure, with a wooden or fabric canopy, supported by either two or
four posts. 3 A bed with just two posts could be fixed to a wall or supported by a back panel. This was the case
for the largest surviving bed of the period, the Great Bed of Ware. This was supported by a large, decorative
inlaid bedstead, and was probably commissioned by an inn owner in Ware, who wanted to attract guests with
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