If there’s one demographic that would never be satisfied with budget beds, it’s royalty, and this exquisite bed is proof of that. The Queen Anne State Bed is an angel bed was commissioned in 1711 by John, 1st Earl Poulett, for Hinton House in Sommerset. He was remodelling a suite of rooms in the house in an attempt to win favour with the monarch of the time, Queen Anne.
He had been given high office in the Royal Court as Lord Steward of the Household, and he remodelled the rooms in the house, including a state bedroom which contained a gold and crimson bed. When the remodelling work was done, he named the new suite of rooms after Queen Anne in an attempt to win favour with the monarch. By 1814, the bed had been radically altered. New posts were added to it, and the bed itself was reduced in height. The bed suffered even more damage in 1910 when it was sold to Lord Anglesey, who moved it to house Beadesert.
Fast-forward another 71 years to 1981, and the bed was clearly showing its age. When it was purchased for Temple Newsam in Leeds, it was in a rather poor state. The bed posts were unstable, and the canopy was close to collapse. Two years ago, restoration work began, and the bed is now ready for public viewing.
The bed is called an angel bed because of its distinctive canopy. The canopy weighs almost a ton, and is suspended from the ceiling. There are very few original angel beds still in existence, so it is an important part of our history.
It took two years to repair the bed because it wasn’t just the canopy that needed work. The three mattresses also needed replaced. One mattress was wool, another mattress contained horsehair, and the other was made of feathers, so it wasn’t easy to source original mattresses! In addition to replacing the mattresses, the posts were re-carved, and trimmed in gold lace. The bed has been restored to be as close to the original as it was possible to get it, and it’s now sturdy, luxurious, and once again fit for a queen.
If you’d like to see the bed, you can visit Temple Newsam, where it will be on display between now and May 2012 as part of an exhibition called Bedtime Stories. The first part of the exhibition is devoted to the 300th anniversary of this iconic bed, and the craftsmen that have put so much love and care into restoring it.
When the Queen Anne State Bed exhibition closes, it will be replaced with another exhibition which will be devoted to the history of beds and nightwear between 1650 and 1850. How has nightwear changed over the last few hundred years? How do the beds of that era compare to the budget beds of today? The story of historic bedding will be told from the 15th May 2012 in Chapter Two of the Bedtime Stories exhibition.
This post was written on behalf of The Original Factory Shop who stock beds and cut price mattresses.
