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Oak, the long term favourite for British furniture
Oak has long been valued for its durability and attractive grain, so it is not surprising that some of the earliest British furniture, the simple wooden chest or coffer would have been made of oak.  The oak chest was a multi-purpose piece of furniture, being used for storing everything from money and jewellery to weapons and linen – in fact anything of value.  The advantage of keeping valuables in one strong wooden box was that, when living in turbulent times, it was possible at a moment’s notice to remove the box to a place of safety.   

Oak chests continued in use in their simplest form right up to the 20th Century, being used as a trunk or sea chest until gradually being replaced by boxes made of other materials.  The oak bedside cabinet was actually a genteel response to the lack of plumbing in many 19th Century houses.  Lavatories were often situated at the far end of the garden or some other distant location.  People answering the call of nature during the night used chamber pots, and the nightstand was somewhere to store the pot until it could be emptied in the morning.  Gradually during the latter half of the 20th Century, plumbing improved sufficiently as to make the use of chamber pots largely obsolete.  By this time however, the oak bedside cabinet had proved itself indispensable in so many other ways that they did not disappear from use.    

Bedside cabinets became ideal for holding lamps and as a place to put spectacles, alarm clocks, books and all the various other small items found in people’s bedrooms. The typical oak bedside had previously comprised a small drawer with a cupboard underneath.  In many cases the only change was that the cupboard space was replaced by two additional drawers, creating the 3 drawer oak bedside cabinet.

Of course bedside cabinets are available in countless different materials but oak is a traditional choice due to its associations with the original wooden chests. During the 16th and 17th Centuries oak covered large parts of the country and was in plentiful supply.  It was a universal construction material – the steel or plastic of its day – and oak was used for everything from buildings and furniture to carts and warships.  In fact, almost everything that was made would have had a version made of oak.  

Oak, used for everything
Oak is a relatively slow growing tree and produces a dense timber that is suitable for most uses.  It may not, for example, be as rot resistant as sweet chestnut when used for fencing, but it is still a very good material for fencing.  It might not carve as easily as lime, but is still good for carving and – to many people – its grain is as beautiful as that of walnut or mahogany.  It is a perfect material in fact, for making an oak bedside cabinet.  

English and Welsh oak continued to be plentiful until the middle of the 18th Century when the demands for more ships for Britain’s Royal and Merchant navies began to use the timber at greater rates.  But by far the biggest impact was the onset of the Industrial Revolution that consumed vast quantities of wood for iron making before the method of using coal was perfected.  This took far more timber than would have been needed to make an oak bedside cabinet for every household in the country and was a time when people first realised that maintaining oak woodlands for the value of their timber was important.  The Forest of Dean on the Welsh/English borders was one of the first areas in Britain where woodland management with a view to future timber needs began to be practiced.

Hearts of Oak and oak bedside cabinets
It is very likely that the Forest of Dean was the source of the oak used for building such famous ships as the Mary Rose and HMS Victory – the world’s oldest naval ship still in commission. Indeed, the importance of Britain’s oak woodlands was so great to the Royal Navy that even today its official march is still ‘Hearts of Oak.’  This invaluable material, used to build the ships of what was once the world’s most powerful navy, was also used to build the altogether more humble oak bedside cabinet.

By the end of the 19th Century warships were being made from steel rather than wood.  It might be thought that wood was now redundant but, in the first big conflict of the 20th Century,  the new ‘industrialised’ forms of warfare that appeared in World War One devoured huge quantities of wood to shore up the sides of the trenches and dugouts.  

Oak woodlands across Britain were clear felled to meet the demand and such was the effect that when the First World War ended it was realised that Britain’s woodlands had a strategic value to the defence of the country.  Without massive timber supplies, Britain would have been unable to prosecute the war.  As a direct result, in 1919 the government established the Forestry Commission.  This organisation’s prime function was to secure and protect Britain’s native timber resources.  

Despite the early work of the Commission in replanting large areas of woodland, timber production is a long term process and so there was still a shortage of wood during the Second World War even to the extent that, for a short period, it was actually a criminal offence to make wooden furniture.