The fifty year mattress

Back in 1968, when Mary Hopkins’ nostalgic hit ‘Those were the Days’ was topping the singles chart, Mary Fletcher bought a mattress. Forty-five years later, she still sleeps on it, “the most divinely comfortable mattress I have ever slept on”.  Apart from being beautifully restful, the mattress should be good for another forty five years and more, during which time it will have saved at least 10 conventional mattresses from having been made, discarded and sent to rot in landfill.

This is the story of Mary Fletcher’s mattress, its birth from English ‘long staple’ wool in an Italian bed-maker’s workshop, its journey, in 1980, across a snow-shrouded Europe, and its continued, generous giving of delicious sleep well into its fifth decade. This is also the story of how crazy it is that as a nation we send  millions of mattresses – 144,000 tonnes worth, including 84,500 tonnes of perfectly re-usable steel – each year to landfill.

A former Foreign Office shorthand typist and translator, Mary went to work in Milan in 1968, sleeping on a camp bed and sitting in a deck chair until “my darling mother sent me money to buy a proper bed”.

The bed Mary Fletcher bought was made by Senor Oldani, a Milanese bed-maker and upholsterer. He made beds the Italian way, and the way we used to make mattresses in England before the introduction of short-lived internally-sprung mattresses. Mary’s bed has an “indestructible” steel  spring base, topped with a mattress stuffed with silky, long-haired sheep’s wool, typically found in English lowland breeds such as Dorset Horn, Cotswold and  Border Leicester. “Because it is made of wool, it is brilliantly cool even in 35 degree centigrade nights, and wonderfully warm in really cold winters. It is also just the right firmness. I have a difficult back and it is the only mattress I can comfortably sleep on,” says Mary, 84, now retired and living in the gentle folds of rural Oxfordshire.

The beauty of the mattress is that when it needs a wash, the wool can be pulled out, stuffed, in batches, into pillow cases, put through the washing machine and after drying, carded back into fluffy pile before being returned to the mattress cover. “Every few years, it needs to be re-carded, as the wool slowly compacts,” says Mary. “In Italy, during the summer the mattress man, ‘il cardatore’ tours Italian homes, pulls out the wool from their mattresses, re-cards it, adds some more, as the process reduces the stuffing a bit, re-buttons and then sews the mattress cover back up again.” Mary submitted her mattress to this process four times while she was in Milan.

“I left Milan in 1980 and couldn’t bear to leave my mattress in Italy, so with my brother’s help and a large van, we drove it through the snowy Alps until it arrived here in Oxfordshire.” The problem now of course for Mary was would anyone in England be able to continue the regular process of re-carding the wool?

“I found an upholsterer in Whitney who had an old carding machine he used for traditional horsehair mattresses, but ironically he had no access to English long staple wool, so over the next thirty years my mattress got thinner and thinner.”

Almost despairing that she would be able to continue sleeping on her emaciating mattress, Mary found Rhiannon Rowley of Abaca Organic, who makes wool mattresses in the west of Wales, from organic British wool. “It was a bit trial and error, because although I have re-stuffed wool and horsehair mattresses, I had never done an all-wool one before,” says Rhiannon. “The tricky bit is to get it even and not lumpy. You have to do it by hand,  layer by layer, working with the wool, not against it, you can’t just stuff it in. Wool has a mind of its own.”

It took six hours to fill Mary’s mattress, with a combination of Mary’s original wool, and a top-up of Dorset Horn wool, which most closely matched Mary’s existing stuffing. Rhiannon was so impressed with the results that she now plans to make more all-wool mattresses herself. “Mattress retailers recommend you change your mattress every 7 – 10 years, which is a criminal waste of money and materials,” she says. “Although I can’t find any British sprung-base bed makers, there are lots of antique ones on the market people could use.”

Wool and sleep

Like all young mums, Pia Maguire has joy and love in abundance. What she could always do with more of is sleep: that delicious state of blissful unconsciousness that parents of babies and toddlers crave almost to obsession.

Pia’s beautiful daughters’ sleep patterns are further complicated by their suffering from eczema, resulting in broken nights and terrible discomfort. “Sometimes it has been so bad that the youngest, Maya, who is only five months old, would scream with the pain and irritation of it,” says Pia, who works part time in Human Resources. When Maya was two months old, Pia, increasingly sleep-deprived, and wanting to do something for her girls, investigated research on eczema and found reference to wool bedding improving sleep quality, particularly for people suffering from skin disorders.

“I ordered wool cot duvets, pillows and mattress toppers for the girls’ beds and the difference was immediately noticeable,” says Pia who lives with husband Ben and daughters Ava and Maya in north London. “Ben was at first a bit sceptical and wasn’t sure I was spending the money wisely, but he’s now a convert. After the girls’ sleep improved, we ordered wool bedding for ourselves, and we sleep better now too.

“What was also pleasing was that the wool came from British sheep, rather than from cotton from the far East or goose down from eastern Europe.  It’s also helping sheep farmers look after our countryside by making it worth their while to keep sheep. It made me feel proud in a way,” says Pia.

Anecdotal evidence such as Pia’s is always nice to hear, as the British wool industry, once the mainstay of our rural economy, is struggling to assert itself despite its impeccable eco-credentials.  Not only is British wool recyclable and local but sheep farmers do much to maintain our rural landscape.

However ongoing studies into wool and sleep at the University of Sydney in Australia, appear to confirm Pia’s experiences. Researchers at the University’s Faculty of Health Sciences conducted tests using polysomnography, which measures the amount of sleep, and the type of sleep people get using sensors. Eight healthy volunteers slept in and on wool, cotton and synthetic sleepwear and bedding at three different temperatures: hot (29 degrees C), neutral (22 degrees C) and cold (17 degrees C). The differences in sleep quality showed that sleeping in and on wool produced more deep sleep, and longer sleep with the difference at high temperatures most marked. Here, the average night’s sleep was 448 minutes (7 hours 28 minutes) with wool compared to 426 minutes (7 hours 6 minutes) with synthetic nightwear. Cotton performed better than synthetic, but worse than wool.

The research, which is due to be published later this year in a scientific journal, compliments previous research which shows benefits of sleeping on wool and sheepskin both for healthy people and for those with bed sores and skin problems. Scientists believe the wool bedding gives better sleep because it absorbs much of the sweat bodies produce in the night, keeping skin dry and comfortable. It also regulates body temperature, keeping sleepers warm in the winter and cool in the summer, a feature that is particularly helpful for babies, who have trouble regulating temperature.

Jo Dawson, of H Dawson Wool, a family wool buying business since 1888, says that slowly the British are re-discovering wool, for all sorts of uses including bedding, sleepwear as well as more unusual architectural and interiors applications. Designers have even made load bearing structures with wool, including staircases. “British lowland wool is particularly good for bedding because it is naturally bouncy and springs back into shape when depressed.” He says that for years wool bedding was only of minority interest because it was difficult to wash but now washable duvets, pillows and mattress toppers are available thanks to modern wool processing methods.

Certainly wool mattress toppers, which cost around £100 – £125 are kinder on the pocket than wool mattresses which can cost between £1,000 – £2,000.

Children’s sleep expert Andrea Grace says that wool blankets and sleepwear, once widely used, have in recent years gone out of fashion in preference to cotton. “I did however always put a fleece sheepskin at the bottom of my own children’s prams when they were babies, although my youngest is now 14,” she says. “It doesn’t surprise me that babies sleep better on wool bedding as the natural fibres are likely to help regulate temperature. I would however advise parents to check their babies aren’t allergic to lanolin first, if they are tempted to try wool.”