A Brief History of Country-house Sleeping Etiquette

  

Lord and Lady Grantham were the exception not the rule. From Country Life:

There is a long-standing tradition among Britain’s aristocracy for couples, even married, to sleep apart. As Lady Pamela Hicks, cousin of the late Duke of Edinburgh and former lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth II, told biographer Sally Bedell Smith in Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch: ‘In England, the upper classes always have had separate bedrooms. You don’t want to be bothered with snoring or someone flinging a leg around. When you are feeling cosy, you share your room… It is lovely to be able to choose.’

Far from being a sign of distance or dysfunction, sleeping separately was — and still is, in some circles — a mark of elegance, practicality and personal comfort. Not only that, notes Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey, it may actually help sustain marriages. ‘I am quite sure their decision to have their own bedrooms and, occasionally, to share them, is one of the main reasons why divorce is kept to a minimum in really aristocratic circles,’ he notes. (Read more.)