The Great Bed of Ware, an Elizabethan tourist attraction mentioned in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and once displayed in the Ware’s inns, is back in the town for a year.

The Victoria & Albert Museum has lent it to Ware Museum.

It was made around 1593 and has been on show and in use at five inns over more than two centuries. In the Victoria era it was an attraction at Rye House to the south of Ware which was a day trip from from London by train.

The bed is mentioned by Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, Byron and has recently appeared in a poem by Andrew Motion.