Object of the Month – May 2025
May’s Object of the Month is the bed displayed in the museum’s furniture gallery. The bed was donated to the museum by William Murray Tuke in 1882, an antiquarian collector whose house, The Vineyard, was located on Windmill Hill in Saffron Walden.
The Regional Furniture Society’s recent research paper confirmed that the bed we have on display is a complete specimen, not an enigmatic oak Tudor bed (15th century), which might have been a “Victorian (19th century) assemblage of disparate parts.”
Radiocarbon research has confirmed that it is an even earlier Plantagenet bed, most probably made in England in the 15th century (1450-1480 AD).
You can read the full research paper of our amazing bed by Aidan Harrison in the 2024 edition of the Regional Furniture Society Journal, available here Journal | Regional Furniture Society
