Our story
With over 180 years of experience, we’ve learned that if we’re going to make a beautiful bed, we’ve got to do it all ourselves.
Our beds don’t start out life in a factory, but on a 300-acre farm in North Yorkshire. Here we rear sheep for their wool and grow the fibres that go into our mattress fillings. We don’t do this because it is easier. It takes us a year to grow the ingredients for one mattress. We do it because better ingredients make a better bed.
Our craftmanship
A good night’s sleep doesn’t happen by accident and at Somnus, there are no shortcuts to quality. We carefully select the finest natural fillings for our luxury mattresses, so it is only right that the same attention to detail goes into our British craftsmanship.
At our factory in Yorkshire, every mattress, divan, headboard and bed frame is hand made by our skilled crafters. From upholstering each headboard, to tailoring and hand tufting all of our mattresses, each bed in our factory is crafted to the customer's individual order.
In tailor-making a Somnus bed, our most valuable tools are a set of hands. These are not just any hands. They belong to craftsmen like Andy Davis. In one week Andy will stitch our unique mattresses using a 12-inch needle and a lot of patience. After doing this for 25 years, he's got it down to a fine art. An art that a machine will never be able to master.
These time-honoured techniques have often been passed from generation to generation, resulting in beautiful, bespoke beds that are of the highest quality and represent the bed in British manufacturing.
Sleep. Designed.
Our history
We’ve been making beds since 1840. In that time we have remained a family business crafting quality beds for more than five generations. The knowledge that we have gained from over 180 years of bed making has made the Somnus and Harrison Spinks names synonymous with hand-made, luxury, pocket-spring mattresses.
These days, we have more than 600 people working with us, from farmers who rear our prize sheep to engineers who develop our award-winning springs and craftsmen who still hand side-stitch our mattresses.
Some of the ways we make beds today may be different, but our aim is still the same as it always has been: to create a tailored sleeping experience that is second to none. We look to innovate and lead the way by developing the best pocket spring mattresses and have replaced man-made fibres with 100% natural upholstery fillings in order to improve comfort wherever possible, but where traditional techniques remain the best, why change things for the sake of it. You see, when it comes to delivering the perfect night's sleep, we never rest.
Our farm
Our dedication to crafting luxury pocket sprung beds extends beyond the manufacturing process. A bespoke Somnus bed starts life on a 300-acre farm in North Yorkshire, where we produce the best quality natural fillings for our hand-made mattresses. We are the only bed company in the UK to own a farm and manufacture our own fillings. This makes a Somnus bed home-grown by us, and tailor-made for you.
At the Harrison Spinks Farm, we rear sheep in exchange for their woolly fleeces and grow fibres such as flax and hemp, all of which are processed and blended right here on our Yorkshire farm to form luxury fillings for our natural mattresses.
Our flock of Texel, Mule, Suffolk and Zwartbles sheep provide the finest pure-grade British wool, which is naturally soft, springy and sumptuous, while the flax grown on our farm will help keep you cool and fresh throughout the night. Hemp is a carbon-neutral fibre which is carefully nurtured on our farm without the use of pesticides. Once harvested, these materials travel less than 20 miles to our factory in Leeds, reducing our carbon footprint and demonstrating the commitment that we have to our environment.
