Project findings
This project was the first to define and analyse sleep habits as historically-situated environmental practices.
It investigated how and why communities in Britain, Ireland and England’s emerging American colonies c.1500-1750 engaged with their physical surroundings in an effort to sleep well and safeguard their health.
The project uncovered an environmentally informed culture of ‘sleep care’, its conceptual underpinnings, and its manifestation in a range of everyday ‘sleep care’ practices from the preparation of soporific tonics to the composition of bedding materials. The project also examined the relationship between human and animal sleep in the “age of improvement” in early modern agriculture. It demonstrated that ‘sleeping well’ involved much more than simply avoiding sleep disorders or coping with sleep loss.
Publications
Sasha Handley and Holly Fletcher: 'Sniff Your Way to a Good Night's Sleep'
Professor Sasha Handley and Dr Holly Fletcher argue in this History Workshop online article that those hoping to use scents to promote healthy sleep today, such as the #sleepmaxxing trend, are part of a long and rich historical tradition dating back to the early modern period. Read more here.
Holly Fletcher and Sasha Handley: 'Sleep, Scent, and Household Medical Care in Early Modern England'
Dr Holly Fletcher and Professor Sasha Handley have traced how English householders sought to procure sleep in an open access article. Examining the botanical materials, methods and knowledge underpinning soporific recipes in manuscript and printed collections c.1500–1750, they identify olfactory manipulation as the principal strategy in homemade sleep therapies. Read more here.
Holly Fletcher: 'Making beds in early modern England: sleep, matter and environmental change'
Dr Holly Fletcher has published an open access article arguing that sleep management in early modern England involved environmental practices in which bodies and matter were interwoven. She transforms our view of the sleeping conditions of the early modern poor and demonstrates the significance of place-specific, material knowledge for health care practices. Read more here.
Leah Astbury: 'Eat, Sleep, Lust, Repeat: Bedtime Routine, Health and Herbals in Early Modern England'
Dr Leah Astbury has published an open access article exploring research from the project on how routines around sleep, sex, eating and drinking were deployed as domestic practices with medical, moral and social importance. Read more here.
Interviews and media
Professor Sasha Handley has provided expert contributions to a wide range of media:
- BBC History Extra, Life Lessons from History, ‘Tudor sleep lessons’ (2026)
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BBC History Extra, ‘Could Tudor sleep tips fix your insomnia? Here’s what they got right (and wrong)’ (2026)
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Interview with ABC Nightlife radio, Australia, ‘How to wake up without an alarm clock’ (3 April 2026)
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Expert comment for article on BBC Future: ‘Knocker uppers and candle clocks: How people woke up before alarm clocks’ (7 March 2026)
- BBC Ideas, ‘Five things we can learn from the past about sleep [bbc.co.uk]’ (2024)
- BBC article by Zaria Gorvett on the lost practice of communal bed sharing (2024)
- BBC Radio 3 discussion on historical sleep research and thinking about sleep patterns, discussing early modern sleep habits and what we could learn from them today (2023)
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BBC History Extra, ‘History & science: the big questions’ [podcasts.apple.com] (2022)
- CNN article about the contemporary relevance of sleep’s history (2022)
Dr Holly Fletcher has also been interviewed about the project:
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The Thinker’s Garden interviewed Holly on the role of environments on sleep in the early modern period (2023)
