Some of us will remember the original cast iron single beds which date back to the 1940’s – maybe at prep school or at your holiday camps? These beds were sized at 1 yard wide by 2 ¼ yards in length with a simple stretched spring base which supported a six inch thick horse hair mattress.

Unlike in today’s market, the size of these mass produced beds was discussed at the time between the bed makers and the textile manufacturers at a high level in the War Office. Government were reluctant to place orders for hospital beds for which they did not have the right size sheets.

The Lancashire Weavers’ Association explained to Whitehall that their Hattersley looms had a maximum width (“reedspace”) of 68 inches which produced finished cloth at 65” wide after bleaching and shrinkage – and that this fabric was just wide enough to give eight inches tuck in on either side of the one yard wide & six inch thick mattress.

And so a whole industry of “T665” sheets and pillowcases was born out of some civil servant’s good planning.

As life returned to normal after the war years, so the demand for double beds grew as newly married couples embraced modern living. The bed manufacturers responded by offering the “DOUBLE” bed and added half a yard to the width (54 inches wide). At the same time they increased the length of their mattresses by 3 inches to accommodate the growing average height of British men. Four foot six inches by six foot three inches became the standard double bed size for the liberated swinging sixties.

The home textile industry had little say in this decision. Initially purchasers of double beds had to seam single sheets together to clothe these new promiscuous mattresses. But mill owners soon responded and ingeniously widened their Hattersley looms by lengthening the shuttle races, warp beams and cross bars so that their reedspaces increased to 94” – the maximum they could achieve at the time because heavyweight shuttles could not be picked across any longer distance due to their inertia.