Buy the Signature I if you want a hand-tufted British wool bed you can turn, and if you have read the spring breakdown before the ticket. It comes in Medium, Firm and Extra Firm with no Soft grade at all, so a light side sleeper should start somewhere else. I rate Staples, and this is a proper piece of mattress-making rather than a name on a label.
Hand-tufted wool and a side you can actually use
The best things about this bed are the fillings and the finish. It's hand-tufted with British wool, which is how the fillings get held where they were put, and it carries two rows of true hand side-stitching. Hand-nested, hand-teased, hand-anything is mostly heritage storytelling to me and machines make lovely mattresses, but tufting and side-stitching are jobs you can see the results of years later.
Inside it you get regeneratively farmed native British wool under The Living Fibre Mark, with flax, bamboo and cotton alongside it. That's the shortest filling list of the five rungs. This is also the only one carrying the British Wool All Seasons line, and what sits behind that bit of seasonal poetry is breathable wool moving warmth and moisture away from you. Useful. Not a thermostat.
Then there's the spring count, which is where I slow down. Of 7,200 springs, 1,200 are full height and 6,000 are minis sitting up in the comfort layers. The 1,200 carry your weight. The minis pad what you lie on. That's the same 1,200 you get on every rung of this range, from the cheapest to the dearest, and it's the one thing that stops me telling you to buy this without a pause. There are no owner reviews yet, so the build is what I'm judging.
At 31cm this is the easiest of the range to live with
Thirty-one centimetres makes this the shallowest of the five, and the least trouble by a mile. You'll still want deep-pocket fitted sheets. Measure the pocket on the sheets you already own before you order, because Sunday is fresh-sheets day in this house and fighting a sheet that's 2cm short is not how I want to spend it.
Turn it and rotate it every few months, alternating the two, and get somebody to hold the other end. The flag-stitched handles are there to steer it, not to make it light. A turnable mattress only beats a no-turn one if you'll do the turning, which is the honest test to put to yourself before you pay for the privilege. And avoid it outright if you are a side sleeper under about nine stone: with no Soft grade here, your shoulder and hip have nowhere to go.
The entry rung is the one I'd stop at
If you're going to buy into this range, buy into it here. The Signature II above it adds mini springs, another 2cm of depth and two more fibres, and nothing underneath you changes. The two Iconic rungs do buy real things, a third and then a fourth row of side-stitching plus certified fibres and a longer guarantee, and they also go a great deal deeper, which your sheets and your bed height have to absorb.
Would I buy it? I'd have it on a shortlist happily, for the wool and the turnable build. I'd put a Hypnos next to it first and make Bensons quote me both in the size I actually want.
What to buy instead
Look at the Hypnos Inspired By Nature 01 in the same shop. It's the cheapest Inspired By Nature rung Hypnos makes for Bensons, and Hypnos is a maker I think gets more mattress into the money than almost anyone selling at this level. It's sold Firm or Extra Firm, two grades against the Signature I's three and nothing softer, so it answers a narrower brief. Price the two in the same size on the same day before you decide which way the value falls.
