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panelling, with a cupboard door or fabric across the entrance. Cupboard beds (also known as box beds) were
common in many areas of the British Isles, including northern England, Wales and areas of Scotland. By the
nineteenth-century, the box bed had acquired a rural association, surviving in traditional farm dwellings. They
had also acquired an association with poverty and wilderness, such as Emily Brontë’s portrayal of a cupboard
bed as the space of refuge for Cathy and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (1847). In the seventeenth-century,
these were associated with relative poverty, rather than a clear urban rural divide. 12 They were warmer than
flat or fold-out beds without a canopy, which may be why they were popular in Scotland and Wales. In the
Shetland Isles, box beds were traditionally made from washed up timber, as few trees grew in the harsh
terrain. 13 These cupboards beds provided a similar insular space to the poster beds, but they were clearly
different in appearance and in grandeur.
Unfortunately, very few of these box beds remain from the seventeenth-century, but there are slightly later
survivors. For example, Llanon Cottage Museum in Cardiganshire, houses a surviving box bed. 14 This bed is
referred to as a wainscot, perhaps because of their similarity to the familiar geometric oak wall panelling which
was relatively common in the early modern era (or maybe because these beds were made from recycled
wainscot in the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries). 15 The blurring of bed and of wainscot panelling was
evident in the seventeenth-century, as wainscot was used in beds and in matching panelling, and this can make
it difficult to determine whether an author was describing a cupboard or a tester bed. 16 This particular cottage
also houses later examples of other types of bed which reflect a typical poor household. One is a truckle bed:
this was a small flat bed which was stored underneath a larger bed during the day, and then could be used by
the children at night, while the parents slept within the box bed. The cottage also housed a cradle with hooded
end for a baby and an adapted poster bed with sawn off posts, which allowed the bed to fit under the eaves in a
loft-space. This typical eighteenth-century two-bedroom house bears strong resemblance to a house, and the
beds within it, which Lady Ann Fanshaw described during the English Civil War. She recorded her disdain at
being forced to stay in a less affluent household than her own: ‘I went immediately to bed, which was so vile,
that my footman ever lay in a better: and we had but three in the whole house, which consisted of four rooms,
or rather partitions, two low rooms and two little lofts, with a ladder to go up.’ (Fanshawe, p. 40) She also
reveals the layout of a small household: two lower rooms (or partitions, so once one large room which had been
divided, and we can assume the same for the loft-space). In this type of layout one can distinguish how each
room was a through-route of sorts, and the limited degree of privacy experienced by the dwelling family.
The final type of bed, which could be either a tester or box, was the travelling bed. These beds were used by a
wealthier type of person, as only they could afford to transport such a heavy and cumbersome pieces of
furniture. Stockport Heritage Service owns a travelling box bed, from approximately 1600. This bed was made
with a set of stairs (in order to climb into the bed), with two locking wig boxes (again, indicating a relative
degree of wealth) and two carved depictions of a husband and wife, complete with initials, fixed to the front of
the bed. The panels indicate that this was made to commemorate a wedding and probably given as a gift to the
husband and wife. The travelling bed ensured a certain level of quality, as not all inn beds were as grand as the
aforementioned Great Bed of Ware. Inn beds could also harbour parasites and disease: the diarist, John Evelyn
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