Looking Back: It's a wonder we ever get out of bed in the morning!
Everything to do with bed is pleasurable. Having a lie in, reading at night for an hour or so, a cuddle or enjoying the feel and smell of crisp, clean bedding. There is much to say about beds.
Over time sleeping habits have changed considerably. The first bed sheet dates back to Cairo in 1000 AD and in Victorian times there could be any number of layers of bedding, certainly amongst the upper classes who also liked beds with canopies round. It wasn’t always so comfortable amongst the lower classes when siblings might all sleep in the same bed. Often top to toe. Families finding it difficult affording a cot for their infants would use a top drawer.
Many people may remember growing up in houses considered most primitive today. With no central heating in our Council house, the bedrooms were always cold with ice on the windows in Winter, inside at that. Mother placed a stone hot water bottle in our beds an hour or so before bedtime with our pyjamas wrapped round it. My mattress seemed to be stuffed with flock. It was lumpy and could collapse in places. In those days pillows were filled with feathers and it wouldn’t have been a good idea to have a pillow fight although those were only something we read about in Enid Blyton books!
Our bedding consisted of a bottom sheet and top sheet, complete with hospital corners, blanket and candlewick bedspread. When you got bored you could pick bits of cotton off it. You might even have a quilt on top and in extreme cases I’ve heard of families using Army great coats as an extra layer.
In the 1960s bed making was revolutionized by Terence Conran who owned the design shop Habitat, after he had visited Sweden and discovered the labour-saving continental quilt. Later to be called a duvet which was a French word for down filled. Harrods then started to sell them and the rest is history!
Described as the ultimate in labour saving, the record for filling a duvet cover in the fastest time goes to a Luke Fuller in 2015 who managed it in 39.41 seconds. I can manage it in around 15 minutes and then have to lie down!