RUSHES FOR CARPETS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume IV, Issue 224, 2 September 1936, Page 2

RUSHES FOR CARPETS.

Queen Elizabeth’s Bedroom. ANCIENT CUSTOM. Although the making of fabrics is a very ancient art, primitive for cloth and other woven materials were used until fairly recent times, even by the royalty of the Western World. The kings of England have not always had carpets for their floors. When William the Conqueror invested his favourites with some of the Aylesbury lands it was stipulated that they should provide straw for his bedchamber. Edward HI purchased straw for his chamber, and even Queen Elizabeth had her presence chamber at Greenwich strewn with rushes, probably, however, out of mere respect for tradition, A traveller returning from England to France in the reign of the French King Henry 111 reported that he had seen but “three things remarkable: which were that the people did drink in boots, eat raw fish and strewed all their best rooms with hay.” In Shakespeare’s time the English stage was strewn with rushes and the Globe Theatre was roofed with them. Matting eventually succeeded the rushes on the stage; and when a tragedy was played there were hangings of black cloth. Churches were also strewn with rushes; and the custom grew into a religious festival long continued.

In the domestic economy, moreover, there were uses for rushes other than as floor coverings. Rush-lights or candles with rush-wicks, are of greatest antiquity, the Romans having used them at funerals and at other ceremonials. The earliest Irish candles were rushes dipped in grease and placed in lamps of oil. The rushlights were used even in the end of the eighteenth century.