A soft bed made of natural fibres is a lovely thing to want, and the Harrison Spinks Pure Sensation Pillowtop looks, at first glance, like the answer. Harrison Spinks makes it in Yorkshire for Furniture Village alone, as part of its Pure collection, where it is the middle of three pillow tops: deeper and more generously sprung than the Harrison Spinks Pure Embrace Pillowtop, a rung below the deepest. Lie down and your shoulder goes first into the soft pillow stitched on top, then pocket springs come up underneath and stop it, so you get the plush feel without ending up in a hollow. It's built for the person who likes the idea of wool and springs but finds most natural mattresses too firm, and I'm glad you're looking at it properly before you hand over the money.
Set it beside the Embrace and the Sensation gives you two more centimetres of depth, cotton added to the wool, hemp and flax, and two layers of micro springs where the Embrace has one. Those are fair upgrades. What stays the same is the thing I'd stop you over. On both beds the soft top is a separate pillow sewn onto a finished mattress, and the mattress only ever sleeps one way up. I avoid pillow tops. The way I see it, a sewn-on cushion goes on getting softer long after the springs below have bedded in, it ends up making more problems than the softness fixed, and there's no flipping the mattress to even things out.
Back sleepers of average build who love a plush first inch are the people the Firm suits, cushioned at the shoulders and steady under the hips. Lighter side sleepers would take the Medium. Anyone over about eighteen stone should pass, since that much weight sinks right through a soft top onto the springs and the plush you paid for goes missing. So should anyone who dresses perched on the mattress edge each morning, and anyone who wants a bed that flips. Even for them, my advice is to admire the fillings, then buy a flat bed.
The fillings are the best thing in it
British wool, hemp and flax grown on Harrison Spinks' own farm, and cotton make up the fillings, all under a cover woven from wool and viscose. There's no foam named anywhere in the build, and no polyester either. Natural fibres like these let air through where foam holds on to your heat, and to my mind they wear better too, which is why a bed filled this way is the first thing I'd put in front of anyone who wakes up sticky on a memory foam mattress.
The cover meets the fire rules without a chemical treatment, which is a nice touch rather than a reason to buy. Every mattress sold here has to pass them somehow. It's hand-tufted and finished with two rows of hand side-stitching, and the stitching is the useful bit, because it firms up the border of the mattress body. The handwork I'd call a pleasure to own, not a reason to pay more: machines make good mattresses too, and I judge one by what's inside it.
8,250 springs in a king, and most of them are small
Underneath everything sits Harrison Spinks' Cortec Quad pocket unit, the part that carries your weight. Alongside it come 1,000 Posturfil springs and two layers of high-density micro springs, 2,500 and 4,000 strong, and that's where most of the 8,250 comes from. The figure is quoted for a king, so a double carries fewer. Once a king passes about 1,500 springs I treat the rest as padding, and I can't get excited about a headline built mostly from micro springs.
I'll give them this much: small springs add a lively give that a slab of fibre on its own doesn't have, so the bed bounces back when you turn over. I respect Harrison Spinks' springs as much as any maker's. The price is the trouble: it's too high for most people, and a good mid-range pocket-sprung bed gets most sleepers most of the way. Over the Pure Embrace, which costs less, the step up is mostly that second layer of micro springs, and micro springs are the part of a mattress I'd least like to pay for.
Is the Harrison Spinks Pure Sensation soft or firm?
Either tension gives you a soft first inch, with the firmness coming from the springs below. Furniture Village sells it in Medium and Firm, and a king or super king can also be made dual tension, with one tension on each side. The difference between the two shows when your hips and shoulders reach the springs.
Go by weight before position. On the Firm, a back sleeper of average build sinks a little way into the soft top, then meets a steady push from below that keeps the hips level. A side sleeper under about nine stone wants the Medium, since a firm spring unit is a board under a light shoulder, even with a cushion on top. Couples who can't agree should have the king or super king made dual tension, so neither of you gives ground on how the bed feels.
A sewn-on top, and turning handles that only ever rotate it
Look at the border and you'll see turning handles, which usually means a mattress you flip. Not this one. It's one-sided, and Harrison Spinks counts pillow tops among its rotate-only beds, so the handles are there to help you spin it round: regularly for the first few months, then about twice a year after that. Give me a turnable bed every time: two faces split the years of wear between them, and here one face takes the lot. A pillow top takes that choice away from you.
Settling is normal on a bed with this much natural filling. Both Harrison Spinks and Furniture Village say body impressions in the fillings aren't a fault, and on a soft top those impressions form where you lie. Rotate it on the schedule, put it on slats no more than 7.5cm (3 inches) apart, because wider gaps let it dip and can void the guarantee, and ask Furniture Village what its guarantee covers on the top and the fillings before you order. A gappy base is always my first suspect when a mattress dips.
Owners are happy with the comfort, and one warns about the edge
Comfort is what owners praise. One calls it the best mattress they've ever slept on, "comfortable but supportive" with it, and another bought it after a good night on a Harrison Spinks bed during a holiday stay, and now wakes with no aches and pains. I'd usually raise an eyebrow at buying on the back of a holiday, because a borrowed bed feels good partly for being fresh and chosen by somebody else. Here at least the springs underneath back the hunch up.
The complaint to hear is about the edge. One owner finds it very soft around the top edges, so that sitting or lying near the side it's "easy to dip down and slide off". The build explains it: the pillow top is a separate soft cushion sewn on just in from the side, so its soft rim is what gives under you near the edge, while the hand side-stitching firms only the mattress body below it. On a double a soft edge shrinks the bed for two people, so couples should take that seriously. Another owner says the 30cm (about 12 inches) of depth makes the bed quite high, which didn't bother them.
It arrives flat and heavy, and Harrison Spinks says never to fold or roll one of its mattresses. I had narrow stairs at my last house, and that's why I'll always tell you to measure the stairs and the turn of the landing before you order. Furniture Village won't take back a mattress used without a protector and charges a collection fee on returns, so put a protector on it from the first night.
What to buy instead
Walk across the same shop to the Hypnos Bespoke Amethyst, which costs a good deal less. It's a Hypnos build with nothing sewn on top: hand-tufted traceable wool and recycled fibres over 1,200 seven-turn pocket springs in a king, at 25cm. It comes in extra firm only, so it suits back and front sleepers, heavier ones above all, and a side sleeper should walk past it. It's one-sided like the Sensation, but with no pillow top on it, there's no soft layer on top to wear down. So what you feel when you lie on one in the shop is the whole of the bed.
Side sleepers set on Harrison Spinks who are happy to shop away from Furniture Village should look at the Harrison Spinks Saltaire 10750 at Mattress Online. Its top is flat and hand-tufted, it's filled with natural fibres to the same 30cm depth, and because it's double-sided you can turn it.
