How a Victorian bed built for monarchs to sleep in before coronations ended up in a Welsh wool mill.
Wendy used to regularly attend local auction sales and one day in the mid-1960s came home with a bed, bought for £100 .
"And there were these holes in the posts - as a child I had the idea that this was where you put your cigarette."Since William the Conqueror there had been a tradition that monarchs would spend the night at the Palace of Westminster before they ascended to the throne.For many years, the palace was the primary residence of the monarch, and given its close proximity to Westminster Abbey, where coronations take place, it made sense for the king or queen to stay there.
As grand as the bed is, none of the subsequent monarchs chose to take up the offer of a sleepover in Parliament. Ron and Wendy's youngest son Benedict was even born in it and when the family moved to a woollen mill in Wales, the bed went with them.It was while they were there that the Telegraph published Clive Wainwright's appeal to anyone who may have seen the bed.Clive died in 1999, but his widow Jane still remembers his joy when he heard the bed had been located.
Parliamentary historian Mark Collins explains that the bed was mothballed during World War Two, when Edward Fitzroy, the Speaker at the time, felt it was a bad look to be living in such grand surroundings during a time of war. However, by the 1980s attitudes had changed and Clive Wainwright, along with Tory MP Sir Robert Cooke embarked on a campaign to get the bed back to Parliament.Five of the seven Martin siblings: Jenny and Anne at the back, Nick, Richard and Caroline at the front."We've decided not to make any hasty decisions.
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