HERDYSLEEP
Founded by Lake District brand Herdy in collaboration with luxury British mattress maker Harrison Spinks, herdysleep uses responsibly sourced materials to craft comfortable, rollable, hand-finished mattresses. Co-founder Darren Marcangelo explains more.
We use wool from Herdwick sheep, a breed that is synonymous with the Lake District.
The wool trade has struggled in recent years, so we pay twice the market rate for each kilogram of Herdwick wool, helping to keep a local heritage trade alive.
Herdwick sheep are an extremely hardy breed.
They roam some of the UK’S highest mountains through the winter months, so they have developed a really durable and hard-wearing fleece that provides their bodies with an e≠ective barrier against the elements.
Wool is a brilliant choice for a mattress filling as it is naturally supportive.
When blended with cotton and cashmere, it provides a cosy, comfortable sleeping surface. It is great at regulating body temperature, too, as well as being naturally fire-retardant, hypoallergenic and anti-bacterial.
As Herdwick sheep are sheared once a year, it can take up to 12 months to produce one of our mattresses.
We have a team of engineers in our Yorkshire workshop who design and build each pocket spring from scratch – and each mattress has up to 6,000 pocket springs. Once the chemicalfree sleeping surface fabric is woven and the fillings have been blended, the craftsperson will hand tuft and tape edge each mattress before it is rolled, boxed and ready for delivery.
Yorkshire has a strong history of manufacturing beds and mattresses.
That means we have access to highly skilled craftspeople who have passed time-honoured traditions and techniques from generation to generation. We are a family business and supporting the local economy is important to us, but we’re also continually innovating. herdysleep is the first “bed in a box” mattress that uses traditional making techniques, plus the mattresses are crafted just down the road from the Lakes, meaning we are able to keep our carbon footprint low.
Wool is incredibly versatile and can be used for so many di≠erent purposes, from fabric, clothing and handbags to carpets and mattresses.
I love that people are continually coming up with new and exciting ways to use this material – it has so many inherent properties that the possibilities are endless. We are certainly going to keep on developing products using British wool and to encourage others to do so too, in order to push the boundaries.
herdysleep, herdysleep.com.