A good night's sleep

Bedding preferences (and sleeping arrangements) have varied throughout history, but antique bedlinen still resonates with us today

- Celia Rufey

If you're planning to 'hit the sack' after a night on the town, you aren't, of course, a medieval peasant who was also looking for a good night's sleep on a bag stuffed with straw or hay. Many early medieval families slept on these mattresses, which they stacked neatly in a tight living space. More surprising, however, is finding how the bed was a communal spot for sleep in many families. Parents lay in the middle, with girls on the mother's side and boys on the father's. This was an efficient way to keep warm when textiles were expensive, and a coverlet of wool, linen or hemp did for them all. Bed-sharing continued across centuries; visiting friends or even a servant sometimes climbed in. Strangers often shared a bed at inns and knew they weren't to touch or fidget. When the prolific diarist Samuel Pepys bunked up with a doctor in Portsmouth on 23rd April 1662, his diary only remarked on his pleasure that the fleas preferred the doctor.