Summary of Lucy Worsley's If Walls Could Talk

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The medieval great hall was a wonderful place to be, as it was warm, smoky, and crowded. It became a bedroom for most of the people in the household, and they shared their sleeping space with numerous other people.

#2 Medieval beds for most people consisted of hay or straw stuffed into a sack. The sack might be made out of ticking, the rough striped cloth still used to cover mattresses today.

#3 People were still sleeping in the same bed well into the seventeenth century. When the daughter of Lady Anne Clifford was nearly three, her maturity was measured with three changes in her daily life: she was put into a whalebone bodice, left free to walk without leading strings, and allowed to sleep in her mother’s bed.

#4 The bed was a prized possession for the wealthy. It was a foreign phrase book for visitors to England published in 1589 that explained how an overseas tourist should greet his hotel chambermaid as she prepared him for sleep: My shee friend, is my bed made. Is it good. Yes, it is a good feder bed, the sheets be very clean. I shake as a leaf upon the tree.

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Release date

Ebook: 4 June 2022