We all know the story – a prince is looking for a bride, but he’s having a dreadful time finding one. The thing is, he can’t find a real princess. Then, one dark, stormy night, a bedraggled woman who has been caught in the horrors of the weather outside appears at the door. She is very soggy and somewhat tearful.

She asks if she can stay the night, claiming there’s no need to worry about any funny business as she’s a princess. Yeah, nice line, sweetheart, thinks the Prince’s (pushy?) mum. To test her princessy-ness, said Queen gives the princess a bed with no fewer than forty mattresses on it. Twenty featherbeds and twenty of horsehair.

As far as upholstered beds go, that’s pretty extreme. Mmmmmm, cosy, I hear you think. But Queen Suspicious has sneakily positioned a pea at the bottom. Not one to complain, the princess sticks it out, but she wakes up the next morning finding herself somewhat bruised. Bruised! Her hosts spot this and declare that – hurrah! – she is a princess. The two are wed.

The Dulac illustration from the original Princess and the Pea

Apparently it comes from a Swedish folk story that Andersen himself was told as a child. These days there are all sorts of children’s versions available, all of which feature the luxury bed as a centrepiece. Oh it always looks so cosy – check it out here, and here. But onto our pressing questions…

First of all, why on earth is a princess wandering around in a storm anyway? Where were her security guards? What was going on? Had she escaped? Is it like when Lady Di used to sneak to the cinema on Kensington High Street?

Second of all, what is the actual proof that the bruises were caused by the bed/pea combo? We are not at all sure that they were. After all, she was wandering around in a storm before bed. It could have been hailstones at the very least – if not a fall from her horse or some other mishap.

But thirdly – and most importantly – why is it that people often tell other people ‘Oooh you’re behaving like the princess with the pea’ as if that’s a BAD thing? You know what, this princess, who is so often spoken so ill of, actually sounds kind of cool. She wanders off to do her own thing, regardless of what her King Daddy thinks she’s meant to be doing, she’s smart enough to get let into the castle and crash for the night and she’s polite enough not to complain about her restless night of hell on forty different mattresses. (It’s only the bruises that give her away). And she still gets her guy. All in all, we think she sounds like quite a cool cat.

Princess, you rock.

The Great Bed of Ware. It really is great.

1. It was built by Hertfordshire carpenter Jonas Fosbrooke in around 1590. He certainly had his work cut out – it’s made of oak, measures ten by eleven feet and is decorated with elaborate carved marquetry
2. Originally, it would have been brightly painted. If you look closely you can still see traces of the original colours on the figures carved on the bed-head.
3. It’s said that it can sleep over fifteen people at once. We are not sure that we recommend this for a truly restful night
4. The bed started off in situ at the White Hart Inn in Ware, Hertfordshire (where we like to imagine they advertised ‘Football Shown Here! Modern Beds !) on a little chalk board outside. But by the 1800s it was moved to the Saracen’s Head in the same town. We’re not sure why, but we’re really glad we didn’t have to do the lifting with that one.
5. The bed moved again in 1870 when a Mr William Henry Teale bought it and – somewhat whimsically – decided to pop it in his pleasure garden at the Rye House.
6. In 1931 the Victoria & Albert Museum bought it, and there it remains. Go and see it! But try try try not get in … you may never get out.
7. Sir Toby Belch refers to the bed in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, mentioning a bed sheet ‘big enough for the bed of Ware’.
8. Playwright Ben Jonson called it ‘the great bed at Ware’ in a play in 1609, and it is also mentioned in George Gordon Byron’s Don Juan.
9. Visitors often carved their initials on the bed or applied red wax seals, which are still visible on the bedposts and headboard today. We cannot stress enough that these were visitors to the Hertfordshire inns, and NOT visitors to the Victoria & Albert museum.
10. We very much wish that this bed could talk. Oh, the stories.

After 9 months of arduous interviews and physical tests, The Sleep Room is proud to have on board a new member of staff. Horace Marshall joins us as our Vice Head of Sleep and will be working mainly on product testing. With a background in doing very little, Horace was seen as being the perfect choice for this important new role. When asked to comment on this exciting new opportunity Horace had very little to say. In fact, he said nothing.

Lots of people ask us if it’s ok to bring their children over to the showroom. The answer is a huge “YES, PLEASE!”
Saturday mornings in particular are great fun as there are always a few little monsters leaping from bed to bed. Or even testing them in a more sedate manner like Maggie (pictured below trying to choose between our regular and firm mattress). And when they’re bored of raising hell there’s always some elderflower cordial and toys to keep them occupied for a bit before it’s time for you to disappear off to the park or Westfield shopping centre -or anywhere else that’s guaranteed to totally exhaust you on your weekend!

The result of all these visits by you and yours is that we’re launching our new children’s beds at the beginning of May. A lot of you have said that kids’ beds by people like Aspace and The White Company are a bit flimsy, expensive and take ages to put together. And many of them all look a bit too “kiddy kiddy”. So we’ve taken this on board and come up with a couple of upholstered numbers which look great, are easy to clean and strong enough to withstand the most serious of pillow fights. And there’s even storage space underneath for dolls and Lego. We’ll be sure to post photos here as soon as we have them at the end of April.

Automatic Bed from Nilo Merino Recalde on Vimeo.

Whilst our beds are amazingly easy to assemble, even they can’t make themselves. This could be a tough assignment for Steve and Matt in our “New Product Development Department”!

1. Memory foam mattresses are fairly popular –but not for the reasons you might expect. Although they do offer your body support and can be pretty comfy (especially when they have a layer of pocket springs on the inside), they’re actually extremely hot things to sleep on: they’re made of man made materials which made us sweat like beasts. We think the real reason for their popularity is that they’re heavily promoted by manufacturers and retailers as they can get away with charging more for them. They are made very cheaply in countries like Malaysia (we visited two factories there…

…that was one of them) and then sold for a shedload in the UK as unsuspecting customers fall prey to retailers’ use of names and descriptions like “coolflow system”. We think this is a mug’s game and that handmade English pocket sprung mattresses are the only way to go. Like food, natural is best.

2. Traditionally mattresses have always been constructed so that you need to turn them every few months to stop them sagging in the middle. But this is only because until recently no one had ever thought of designing one which didn’t need turning. After all, if 16 million of us in the UK officially suffer from a bad back, why the Dickens would anyone want a heavy mattress that you have to pick up and turn? The sleepy UK bed industry has only recently developed and promoted “no turn” mattresses. Their extra facility doesn’t add anything to the cost of their manufacture, but retailers still try to charge more for them. Cheeky monkeys, we say.

3. Here’s a line we kept hearing: “You can tell a mattress has good individual pocket springs as when you place a glass of red wine on the bed and then lie down it won’t spill.” Is the marketing person who came up with this idea insane? Of course it spills. We had all sorts of wet fun with glasses of water on dozens of beds. What actually makes an individual pocket spring good or bad is entirely dependent on the quality of the materials used. Unfortunately, unless you see the mattress being made for yourself or are able to compare the internal components of various mattresses with your own hands, you can’t really be sure of the quality until you’ve worn the bed in. Which is why it’s important to trust the person selling you the bed and to ensure that they actually sleep on the same one every night themselves.

4. Almost all bed retailers we met do not sleep at home on the products they sell.

5. Labelling a mattress as “orthopaedic” is a bit like Gillette bringing out a new shaving cream “for sensitive skin.” Apart from kids, who amongst us hasn’t ever had a bad back or wouldn’t describe their skin as sensitive? The only thing such a bed label does is confirm that the mattress will be firm rather than soft, and also give the retailer an excuse to charge you more. Which we think is a bit off.

We’ll soon post more on this blog about what we found. But rest assured we’ve learnt quite a bit which is why we have the confidence to sell just one type of mattress and a small selection of beds. We don’t ever want to have the largest range, just the very best.

Beds as a Revenge Mechanism

Another winner trotting out of our German friends’ stable of fun (and we thought Jeremy Beadle was bad):

Beds as a Bank-Beating Option

If you were asked to think of an alternative to an unreliable banking system, you might not immediately conclude that beds were the answer. However, it’s possible you’d be wrong. Back in 2002, a hotel manager foresaw the future we’re now living in, and decided to take action. Kara Kennedy slowly stole money from where she worked and hid it under her bed.

You might have thought people would have cottoned on pretty quickly and caught her, but it in fact took three years before she was found out, and was believed to have stolen almost £150,000, including over £4,000 in loose change. So there you go. Got problems with the banks? Use your bed instead. Apparently it’s the perfect place to hide your dosh.

Beds as Earthquake Protection

So you wake up in the middle of the night, and there’s an earthquake going on. What’s the first thing you do? Find something really sturdy to hide under, right? Well, apparently there might be a better idea. A 97-year old woman from Iran survived for 9 days buried under rubble from an earthquake, because she’d been wrapped up in bed after tucking into her breakfast.

So if you live in LA, take note. Next time an earthquake hits, don’t head for the cellar; go to bed instead!

Beds as an All-Terrain Vehicle

What do you need to traverse the harshest of terrain? A big 4×4? No, as Top Gear proved, what you need is a broken down wreck of a car. However, even that might have been overkill. Ladies and gentlemen, enter the Great Knaresborough Bed Race. This insane little race could only have been the brainchild of an Englishman.

The idea is that you take a bed, modify it any way you want, find some mates with nothing better to do and then race it against other people over land and water. We like.

Beds as an Escape Method

Finally, if you ever find yourself in jail, and need a way to break out, your bed may once again come to your rescue. Although probably of not much use by itself, as Mythbusters proved in season 6, you could in fact climb down a rope made of bedsheets.

So, if you ever find yourself in a situation where you’re in possession of a bed, but what you really need is a rope, now you know what to do. Knot that bedsheet.