In this video, we join furniture curator Nick Humphrey in pulling back the sheets on The Great Bed of Ware, one of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s greatest treasures.

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.

Constructed around 1590, it was most likely made as a tourist attraction for an inn in Ware, Hertfordshire. Ware was a day’s journey from London and a convenient overnight stop for travellers headed to Cambridge University or further north.

Sojourning guests would therefore carve their initials into the wood, or apply red wax seals to mark their night in the bed, all of which are still visible on the bedposts and headboard today.

Given its reputation, the bed has been referred to in the works of Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, Lord Byron and Charles Dickens, and has also given rise to exaggeratedly bawdy rumours regarding how many people slept in it at one time!

Read more details about the Bed’s history and racy background, by clicking here.

View the original video here.

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