And so to bed...

Forget the standard double: country-house sleeping arrangements have undergone all sorts of intriguing (and eyebrow-raising) shifts throughout history

- By Melanie Cable-Alexander, Illustrations by Oliver Preston

WHEN Jon Culverhouse went for his second interview to be curator of Burghley House in Lincolnshire, he was invited to stay overnight at the estate—together with his future wife. 'We were due to be married in a month's time,' he recalls. 'Yet, we were given separate guest flats to stay in. It was quite remarkable, because it was relatively modern times—1984.' It was his first taste of what life at Burghley would be like.

There is a longstanding tradition among Britain's aristocracy for couples, even married, to sleep apart. As Lady Pamela Hicks, cousin of the late Duke of Edinburgh and former lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth II, told biographer Sally Bedell Smith in Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch: 'In England, the upper classes always have had separate bedrooms. You don't want to be bothered with snoring or someone flinging a leg around. When you are feeling cosy, you share your room... It is lovely to be able to choose.'

Far from being a sign of distance or dysfunction, sleeping separately was—and still is, in some circles—a mark of elegance, practicality and personal comfort. Not only that, notes Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey, it may actually help sustain marriages. 'I am quite sure their decision to have their own bedrooms and, occasionally, to share them, is one of the main reasons why divorce is kept to a minimum in really aristocratic circles,' he notes.

Quite so, adds Lady Celestria Hales, president of the Knights of Malta. 'Having separate rooms, and for the gentleman to visit the lady at night, helps preserve the romance. It's completely normal—if you have a big enough setup—and if you're really lucky, you'll have a bathroom each, too, even as a guest.' Today, you might even enjoy an American-style dressing room, a walk-in closet, which, according to Clive Aslet, visiting professor of architecture at Cambridge University, 'has become a new thing in the past 20 years'.