Warming Pan

When living in Iowa during the winter, there is a large chance that even with a heating system, your house will get cold. This was a problem for our ancestors as well, but even worse. While today we have heating systems throughout our house, that was not true for people of the past. They had to use different methods to keep themselves warm. At night, when they slept, they would have a bed with blankets but sometimes that wasn’t enough, so they invented the warming pan.

During medieval times, frost could easily get into the bedrooms, which could cause sheets to become damp and very cold. It was during the 17^th century that the warming pan was invented to prevent this. A warming pan is a metal pan often made of brass or copper with a long handle attached to it. It would often be hung near the fireplace where it could be filled with smoldering embers or coal. The pan would then be brought over to the bed and put between the sheets where it could be moved around by the long handle. The earliest pans would have been very heavy as they used steel handles and solid brass. The earliest also mostly used coal so holes were added to the lid so that the coals didn’t go out when the lid was closed. This could sometimes lead to problems as the bed would smell like smoke and sometimes the sheets could get scorched.

Many of these pans would have been very nicely engraved with some having the coat of arms of the specific family that used it. Queen Elizabeth, from historical records, may have had a warming pan made of gold that was decorated in diamonds. They were first used often by the rich but by the 18^th century a warming pan market emerged that was aimed at the less wealthy. These 18^th century warming pans used wooden handles and cheaper copper that damaged less and gave off a greyer look. People also began using embers or hot water instead of coals, which meant they didn’t have to have holes in the top. These warming pans were everywhere on the market and were often talked about in domestic economy magazines.

Warming pans were even associated with the royalty of England at one point. In 1685 King James came to power in England and he was Catholic, which the ruling class hated at that time. The public wasn’t too worried as they thought he would eventually die, but his wife, Mary of Modena became pregnant, which worried people that she would give birth to a future Catholic king. Continuing on with her pregnancy, she gave birth a month early but some people like Archbishop of Canterbury weren’t present at the birth causing the public to cry foul. They said that she hadn’t actually given birth to a baby but smuggled one in in a warming pan. The story seems rather odd considering a baby is too big to fit in a warming pan. But because the public didn’t want another Catholic king, they declared that it was a fake baby. This story eventually led to an invasion from Holland by William of Orange and the removal of King James II. Who knew a warming pan could impact English history so much?

Warming pans would have been used all across America even in the Farm House. The Farm House does have one warming pan on the third floor. This pan doesn’t look like your average warming pan though. It is a copper oval shaped pan with a deep grey color. Instead of a long handle on the side it has a round handle on the top, which would be harder to carry. It also doesn’t have any holes on the lid but shows signs of wear and tear. This pan would probably make sense on the third floor as that is always the coldest, especially during the winter; but it would also be hard getting a pan up the stairs filled will hot embers.

While these warming pans were good at heating the bed, they could also lead to scorching the bed or setting it on fire. This was prevented by servants moving the pan around in the sheets to that it would never get to hot in one location. This was a tedious task that involved staying close to the bed. This changed with the invention of the bed wagon. This device is a large wooden frame composed of a series of bent hoops that is about three feet long. There would be an iron trivet built in the middle of the frame where a warming pan could be placed. The bed wagon would then be put under the sheets of the bed with the warming pan in the middle. This was so that the heat could dissipate under the sheets and because the pan was being held on an iron trivet, there was no need to have it moved around, so the servants wouldn’t have to wait around.

Bed wagons were known to be used on farms a lot as well, so it could be possible that one was used at the Farm House. This would help explain why there is a round handle at the top of the Farm House warming pan as it didn’t need a long handle on the side but just needed to be placed in the middle of the bed wagon. People have had a number of different ways to keep themselves warm, as the Farm House has shown. We will have to see what new warming inventions appear in the future.