I Slept on a Medieval Mattress for a Week

AD This video was sponsored by June’s Journey. Download June’s Journey for free now: https://cherrypick.gg/VBirchwood2025

I've wondered for a while now how comfortable a Medieval mattress would have been, so I decided to make one and try it out for a week!

A big thank you to the research consultant of this video, Sarah Prince, researcher at University of St Andrews.

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Further Reading:

Morgan, H., 2014. Between the sheets: reading beds and chambers in Late-Medieval England (Doctoral dissertation, University of York). https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/id/ep...

Morgan, H.L., 2017. Beds and Chambers in Late Medieval England: Readings, Representations and Realities. Boydell & Brewer. https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=e...

Probate Inventories of the York Diocese, 1350–1500, ed. and trans. P. M. Stell (York, 2006)
https://www.collections.yorkarchaeolo...

Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, ed. N. Davis, 2 vols. (Oxford, 2004), I, 253).

J. P. Toomey 2011. ‘A Household Account of Edward, Duke of York at Hanley Castle, 1409–10’, ed. J. P. Toomey in Noble Household Management and Spiritual Discipline in Fifteenth-Century Worcestershire, ed. R. N. Swanson and D. Guyatt. Worcestershire Historical Society 24. Bristol.

Frederick J. Furnivall, ed., Fifty Earliest English Wills in the Court of Probate, London: A. D.1387-1439; with a Priest’s of 1454. Early English Texts Society O.S. 78 (London: Trübner for EETS, 1882), p76.

https://hoveloghage.wordpress.com/202...
https://www.medievalists.net/2023/08/...
https://annkingstone.com/knitting-mad...
https://www.woolsome.shop/rush-mat-hi...

Burger, Glenn. “In the Merchant’s Bedchamber”. In Thresholds of Medieval Visual
Culture: Liminal Spaces, edited by Elina Gertsman and Jill Stevenson, 239-
59. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012 https://www.google.co.uk/books/editio...

Houston, J. F. Fetherbedds and Flock Bedds: A History of the Worshipful Company
of Upholders of the City of London. Sandy: Three Tents Press, 1999 https://www.google.co.uk/books/editio...

French, K.L., Smith, K.A. and Stanbury, S., 2016. An Honest Bed: The Scene of Life and Death in Late Medieval England. Fragments: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Ancient and Medieval Pasts, 5. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/p/pod/...

Knight, C., 2020. The Literature of the Bedchamber in Late Medieval England (Doctoral dissertation, King's College London). https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/ws/portalfi...

Wright, Lawrence. Warm & Snug: The History of the Bed. London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1962 https://www.google.co.uk/books/editio...

Image Sources:

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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Smabs Sputzer, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Thomas Quine, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Dennis G. Jarvis, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...