Sleeping Well at Ordsall Hall

From 2022 to 2025, Ordsall Hall worked with the Sleeping Well in the Early Modern World team at the University of Manchester, led by Professor Sasha Handley. The project Sleeping Well at Ordsall Hall explored research on Tudor and Stuart sleep, health and wellbeing through creative workshops. You can learn more about how the Tudors slept here and watch Professor Sasha Handley talking about what she’s learned from her research here.

Sleeping Well workshops focus on learning about history through making and doing – where participants try creative activities like stuffing mattresses, weaving willow, making sleep salves and ointments, and recreating historical recipes like milky drinks, herbal infusions, and even bedbug treatments. The workshops use ingredients grown in the Hall’s gardens, and encourage participants to spend time outside.

Sleeping Well is the result of an academic partnership with Sasha Handley, Professor of Early Modern History from the University of Manchester.

Partners – Wellcome Trust

The first phase of Sleeping Well was supported by the Wellcome Trust. Between 2022 and 2024, Dr Anna Fielding from the University of Manchester worked with Hall staff and volunteers to deliver a series of hands-on workshops aimed at local schools, community groups, families and adult learners. Although this stage of the project didn’t aim to deliver specific health and wellbeing outcomes – a key feature of the project feedback demonstrated how much people found these creative activities inspired by history calming and connecting.