Original subtitles

[music playing]

Whether you're a night owl or an early riser,

we've all got one thing in common, sleep.

Which helps explain why we spend nearly 2 billion

pounds a year on mattresses.

[GREGG WALLACE] Soft, medium, or firm,

we all spend around 26 years of our lives lying on one.

And surprisingly, for something so comfy, most of

them start off life as this--

cold, hard steel.

The transformation happens in here,

in one of the largest mattress factories in the country.

[music playing] [vocalizing]

[GREGG WALLACE] I'm Gregg Wallace

and I'm springing into action

discovering the astonishing engineering that

goes into delivering a good night's sleep.

It's a bed of nails.

Wow. I'm Cherry Healey.

No bedtime story though. We don't have time.

And I'm investigating whether brain power can be

boosted by an afternoon snooze.

Go.

[GREGG WALLACE] And historian, Ruth Goodman--

Oh.

[GREGG WALLACE] --draws the short straw, checking

out some ancient bedding.

It's better than lying on the floor, isn't it?

Here, in the factory that never sleeps,

they produce 600 handmade mattresses in just 24 hours.

Welcome to Inside the Factory.

[music playing]

This is the Harrison Spinks Factory in Leeds.

They've been helping us catch 40 winks for nearly 180 years.

Here, more than 600 people sew together 465

different styles of mattress.

And there's a lot more to them than you might think.

Whether it's a single or a super king,

each one contains more than 5,000

individual components,

from springs, vents, and tufts,

to frames, fabrics, and fleece,

all prepared on this six and a half acre site.

Today, we're following production

of their king-sized pocket-sprung

emerald mattresses.

[music playing]

It all starts not with a soft bouncy filling,

but with a delivery of heavy duty steel.

[music playing]

Four lorries arrive here every week,

each one laden with 24 tons of steel rod destined

to become mattress springs.

Seeing in today's delivery is

manufacturing director Darren Rhodes.

- Good morning, sir. - Morning, Gregg.

- Right. - How are you?

What have you got in there?

There's 12 coils of two-ton steel.

[GREGG WALLACE] That's heavy, heavy duty.

- You are making beds, right? - [DARREN RHODES] That's correct.

[GREGG WALLACE] And they're going to become the springs?

[DARREN RHODES] That's correct.

Why do you use steel, because that can't be cheap.

It's abundant. It's resilient. It's strong.

It's a perfect material for making springs.

This has got to get unloaded. How long to unload this?

- About 30 minutes. - Right.

Come on.

[music playing] [beeping]

Our mattress production begins.

The 128 kilometers of steel rod on this lorry

will make the springs for 600 mattresses.

The delivery of our steel rod is complete.

But while it would make excellent bed springs

for a giant, for us mortals, it needs

to be slimmed down even more.

To do that, it's squeezed into shape.

It travels into this 14-meter long wire drawing machine,

which will take its diameter from 5.5 millimeters

to just 1.5.

How exactly does it work?

Well, effectively, we're pulling the wire through a die.

You draw that through that hole,

and that makes it 1.5 millimeters.

Correct.

[GREGG WALLACE] The steel heads into a tungsten

carbide dye, the diameter of which

is slightly smaller than the wire.

It's pulled through with a force of 2,500 newtons,

emerging 1 millimeter thinner.

It's then squeezed through another nine increasingly

smaller dyes, finally emerging at the required

1.5 millimeter diameter.

Why don't you just put it through the shape

that you want straight away?

Because the wire would snap.

[GREGG WALLACE] Do you know where reminds me of?

- It's like a pasta machine. - [DARREN RHODES] Exactly.

You keep on tightening the size of the hole you want.

Yeah. Same principle.

[GREGG WALLACE] And just like with pasta,

as our steel gets thinner, it also gets longer.

By the end of the drawing process, each 10.7 kilometer

coil is now a whopping 144 kilometers long.

Now drawn out, the wire is coiled into drums.

Wow.

And that's what we use for making the strings.

So now at the end of all this engineering,

are we finally ready to make springs?

We are.

[GREGG WALLACE] From wire drawing,

the drums head over to spring production,

where the 144-kilometer coils are loaded into what's known

as a pocket coiler machine.

I'm meeting managing director Richard Essery, a man

with a real spring in his step.

So tell me, how exactly are you taking the straight wire I saw

and making it into the curly pigtail?

[RICHARD ESSERY] What we're doing,

we're actually engineering memory into that straight wire.

[GREGG WALLACE] Steel has a remarkable ability

to retain its shape.

And this machine engineers springy memory by forcing

the wire into a spinning wheel.

The tight coil that is made is then opened out and evenly

spaced by a spreader bar.

[RICHARD ESSERY] Now because it's high-tensile wire,

that memory stays, and that's your convolutions.

[GREGG WALLACE] A convolution is--

[RICHARD ESSERY] It's a ring in a spring.

A convolution's a ring in a spring?

[RICHARD ESSERY] Absolutely.

How many of these springs, these complicated springs,

would be in each one of the mattresses?

1054.

1054 in each mattress.

[RICHARD ESSERY] That's correct.

What's the length of the wire, do you know?

It's 1554 meters.

That's just short of a mile.

[RICHARD ESSERY] That's correct, yes.

A mile of wire--

A mile of wire.

- -in a mattress.

This hardware will form the internal skeleton

of our mattresses.

But when did we start sleeping on springs.

Ruth is getting into bed with the history.

[music playing]

The quest for a comfortable night's sleep

is one that has dogged mankind for tens of thousands of years.

But it was the invention of this,

the pocket sprung mattress, that was the real game changer.

It made the mattress modern.

But to find out how we got here,

I'm meeting Deborah Sugg Ryan, professor of design history

at the University of Portsmouth, to sample

the rudimentary mattresses our ancestors would have slept on.

- Deborah. - Hello.

Come on in.

Almost 3,000 years ago, we know that the Romans

were filling simple cloth sacks with wool and feathers.

So what about back here in Britain,

what were mattresses like before there were springs?

In the Middle Ages, around the 1200s,

people would have been making their mattresses out of sacks,

which they called ticks.

They were very strong and densely woven together.

And even today, we still call the fabric that we

use around a mattress, ticking.

[RUTH GOODMAN] These simple sacks would

have been stuffed with straw.

It doesn't look all that comfy, does it?

So if I had my sacks of straw, I was a medieval peasant,

how do I feel about this?

Oh, well, it's all right.

It's better than lying on the floor, isn't it?

[music playing]

A more familiar shape emerged in the 1700s,

but mattresses continue to be stuffed with natural fillings

throughout the 19th century.

Despite offering some comfort, this basic stuffing

soon got lumpy.

Luckily, the solution to a sound night's sleep

arrived in the form of steel,

specifically the steel spring.

This is a sprung mattress.

OK, so springs, I should be hoping for--

ooh. It's quite bouncy, isn't it?

This was developed by a man called Heinrich

Westphal in Germany in 1871.

It was really the next big thing,

the biggest innovation for hundreds,

if not thousands of years.

[RUTH GOODMAN] This innerspring technology

was the beginning of the mattress as we know it today.

Although it was a big leap forward in terms of comfort,

it wasn't without its problems.

So you can see here, we've got this series of steel

springs connected together.

But when you move one, you move a lot of them together.

Yeah, and I definitely felt that when I was lying on it,

that the whole thing sort of--

[laughing]

- -moved all at once.

It was a bit sort of seasick, in a way.

But this innerspring technology was

soon superseded by a newer innovation,

the pocket sprung mattress.

So who do we have to thank for a comfy night's sleep, then?

We have this man, James Marshall,

born in Canada in 1840.

He was an engineer repairing things like early automobiles,

trains, and farm equipment.

That sounds a million miles away from beds and mattresses.

[laughing]

Well, all these vehicles use spring suspension,

and springs had started being used

in the seating for different forms of transport.

[RUTH GOODMAN] Armed with an in-depth knowledge of spring

technology, Marshall identified that by keeping springs

independent of one another, a mattress would be more stable,

and he created the world's first pocket-sprung mattress.

That is it.

The pocket-sprung is just a spring in a pocket.

But they're not done individually like that.

So they're done in line.

So you can see on the edge here.

These kind of strips with all the springs in together.

[RUTH GOODMAN] Yeah.

And then they sew the strips together.

Yeah, and this means that the springs

can move independently without tangling with each other.

Oh, now that makes enormous sense.

Each one has got to work on its own.

It can't get caught up with any of its neighbors.

And it can only go in the directions

- that the pocket allows it. - Absolutely.

So it can mold to the contours of your body,

but also, of course, there are two of you in bed,

and it means that you can move independently.

It's really very simple, but very clever.

The Marshall coil set a new standard in bedding.

And 120 years later, nearly 40% of all

the mattresses sold in Britain today

still use this technology.

I don't think that James Marshall, even

after the best night's sleep, could have

imagined leaving such a legacy.

[music playing]

[GREGG WALLACE] All of the mattresses made here at

the factory are pocket-sprung.

So our mile of newly coiled springs

need to go into their pockets.

Durable and water resistant polypropylene fabric

is used to make the protective casings.

Polypropylene is folded around the springs

and ultrasonically welded.

- It's done what? - It's ultrasonically welded.

Like ultrasonic the Hedgehog?

Absolutely.

[GREGG WALLACE] This process uses high-frequency vibrations

to generate temperatures of over 160 degrees C,

heat sealing the polymer cases in just 0.2 of a second.

But the mattresses here don't just contain springs.

Oh, no. Even the springs contain springs.

So these little springs are going into the back

of the big springs.

[GREGG WALLACE] Why?

Basically, it's for extra support for the heavier

parts of your body.

So if I put my belly on there, it would only go that far.

But if I put my belly and my ego--

- It'll be fully compressed. - [laughing]

[GREGG WALLACE] In our mattress, every third coil spring

contains a baby pocket spring.

One hour since our steel rod arrived.

With springs made and safely tucked up in their pockets,

they might not look much like a mattress.

But that's all about to change.

So hey, it's a little train going through here,

a train of springs.

- What's happening? - So this is a glue assembler.

So what we're doing now is assembling the pocket

coils into a mattress core.

[music playing]

[GREGG WALLACE] For a king-sized mattress,

31 strips each containing 34 springs, are lined up,

then glued in place, top and bottom.

Well, that, looks like a mattress to me,

or if not, the bulk of a mattress.

[RICHARD ESSERY] Almost.

[GREGG WALLACE] This might be a mattress factory,

but there's no time for sleeping on the job.

This lot are far from finished, so onto the next stage

in production--

framing, which is on a different level.

And there's a reassuringly low-tech way of getting there.

You're just going to chuck them down the slide?

[RICHARD ESSERY] Yeah, it looks like a kid slide, I know,

but that's exactly what we're going to do.

- It's a pretty steep slide. - [RICHARD ESSERY] It is.

- Do you ever go down it? - Absolutely not.

- Have you ever been down it? - No.

Well, I wouldn't tell you anyway.

- Ready? - Ready.

[GREGG WALLACE] Go. Let's just let it drop.

[yelling]

[laughing]

The chute drops the mattresses to mattress

assembly just next door.

It's the central hub of the factory site

where 114 employees work on six different stages

of mattress production.

I'm meeting team leader Gary Smith.

- How's it going, mate? - [inaudible]

Are you going to lift this onto the table

and I'll show you how to frame it.

Whoa.

We're attaching a steel frame onto each side

to support the spring core.

Use that firm edge-- stops you feeling

like you're going to roll off.

It also holds the structure better,

the shape of the bed better.

[GREGG WALLACE] It's a proper metal frame.

Yeah.

So, although we fasten the frame to the core unit,

- you also need a hog ring gun. - A what gun?

- A hog ring gun. - A hog ring-- why is it--

it must be from the time when put a ring through a pig's nose.

A ring through a pig's nose.

So all we're doing is just fastening the nearest string

to the corner to the firm.

[GREGG WALLACE] The galvanized steel rings are fired out

of the hog ring gun with compressed air,

looping through the frame and mattress structure.

If you fix the corners, can I have a go at the straight bits?

Yes.

[GREGG WALLACE] Does anyone ever come and say,

can you do their ear?

No, but I have offered.

[laughing]

- All set. - Ho. Ho. Ho. Ho. Ho.

- Fire it in and then hold it. - Whoa. You know what?

It's pretty heavy duty, this bed making, isn't it?

It takes two people just three minutes

to frame each side of a king-sized mattress.

I think I'm slowing things down.

Gary, Gary, Gary, Gary, pack it in, son.

- All right? - [laughing]

It's not clever.

All right, you're just making me look stupid.

All right?

[music playing]

We all know the benefits of getting a good night's sleep,

but what about grabbing 40 winks during the day.

Cherry's finding out whether we should

be making time for a nap.

[CHERRY HEALEY] To find out if there

are any benefits to a daytime nap,

I'm meeting Dr. Neil Stanley--

- Hello. - Hi.

- Lovely to meet you. - Lovely to meet you.

[CHERRY HEALEY] who specializes in the science of sleep.

Should we be making time for naps?

I think we should.

A nap is great for boosting your performance.

And the effects of a nap will last three or four hours.

Whereas, many people go for caffeine, coffee, tea,

the effects of those are very short.

They may only last for 30 minutes.

So less flat white and more lie flat.

Absolutely. Yes, 37% of people

in the UK say they're not getting the right amount

of sleep for them.

And, we know the effects of poor sleep

are as bad as being over the drink driving limit.

[music playing]

[CHERRY HEALEY] To get the most out of a nap,

it has to be the right duration.

20 minutes is optimum.

Any longer, and we fall into deep sleep.

And it's waking prematurely from this that makes us feel groggy.

Timing is everything. So a 20-minute nap, which requires

about a 30 to 40 minute window.

Giving you that time to fall asleep

means that you get the benefit of sleep

without getting into that deep sleep.

[CHERRY HEALEY] To demonstrate just how beneficial a siesta

can be, we're heading to a drop-in sleep

center in East London.

Here, worn out city folk can pay eight pounds for 40 winks.

Neil has set up an experiment in what

he's calling his reaction room.

Uh, so Neil, how on earth are we going

to test napping with something that looks

like it belongs in the gym?

What we have here is a reaction timer.

I believe, these individual lights will light up

and the subject's got 30 seconds to cancel as

many as they can in that time.

And then after they've done that,

they'll go upstairs for a 20-minute nap,

come down, and repeat it.

And hopefully, we'll see an improvement

- in their reaction time skill. - All right, let the games begin.

Our weary volunteers arrive.

Get ready.

And they begin canceling those lights.

Go.

[music playing]

Time out.

[CHERRY HEALEY] First test done, now, it's nap time.

I've made it nice and cozy for you.

No bedtime story, though. We don't have time.

To get the best out of your nap, you need a quiet, dark room

with a temperature between 16 and 18 degrees C.

The best time is between 2:00 and 3:00

in the afternoon when our bodies naturally

have a dip in energy levels.

But don't stress if you don't fall asleep straight away,

even closing your eyes to rest

is proven to have a restorative effect.

20 minutes later, how do our volunteers feel?

I feel more relaxed. I didn't actually go to sleep.

Did you fall asleep quite quickly?

- It took me about five minutes. - That was a good 20-minute nap.

- I feel brilliant. - I feel good, feel refreshed.

[CHERRY HEALEY] They report feeling better.

Get ready.

[CHERRY HEALEY] But are their reactions better?

Go.

[CHERRY HEALEY] On average, our volunteers recorded an 11%

improvement in reaction times.

Time out.

[CHERRY HEALEY] But some individuals

improved by as much as a third.

This is something that people can do

that really does have an effect on the way they perform.

So it is an important thing that we should

be doing each and every day.

So our results show that a power

nap really is a powerful way to brighten up your day.

Wake me up in 20 minutes.

[music playing]

[GREGG WALLACE] Back in Leeds, our mattresses

are taking shape.

But no one's getting a good night's

sleep on these steel skeletons.

They need some comfy coverings.

Every mattress made at the factory

is covered in tightly woven cloth known as ticking.

And this is also made on site.

Production manager Matt Butler is giving

me a tour of the weaving room.

[MATT BUTLER] This is one of our weaving looms.

We've got six of them in the business,

and we're producing over 10,000 meters of tick a week.

This, to someone who's never seen it before,

is almost unbelievable.

The looms weave fire-retardant, viscose fibers

together to create the perfect outer casing

for the mattresses.

Well, what this is, is it's an air jet loom.

It fires a jet of air straight across the cloth

and takes one its cotton strands and fires it across.

And then when it's coming back, it just reverses,

and then shoots back with another jet of air.

[GREGG WALLACE] These air jet looms weave 30% faster

than conventional machines, producing the eight

square meters of ticking needed to cover a king-sized mattress

in under 30 minutes.

Once woven, the ticking moves to the sewing building

where it's cut to size to make the top and bottom panels of

the mattresses and the borders.

Eight handles are attached.

And 16 nickel-plated air vents are punched in.

These little vents on the side, right,

do you know what they are for-- but when you like bounce

on the bed to let the air out?

They are in the mattress to let the air through

and to let the mattress breathe.

[GREGG WALLACE] Can I have a go at this?

- Of course, you can. - Right.

This is a job I can do.

- [laughing] - Oh.

I didn't line up this line with that line there.

Look.

I've messed up a bit.

I haven't necessarily messed it up.

This could be like a limited edition.

Exactly.

Every cloud.

[music playing]

[GREGG WALLACE] Two hours and 34 minutes since we began.

Back on the assembly line, I'm catching

up with mattress master, Gary.

Gregg.

I brought all these folders, right.

OK, so now you're going to show me what to do with it.

- Right. - See these?

- Yes. - I put some of these on.

- Did you? - Look at that craftsmanship.

- Look at that. Look. - Beautiful.

- Eh? - [laughing]

[GREGG WALLACE] A layer of polyester padding

is fitted to soften the edges of the mattress.

Ready for the border.

Now we're going to slide this over the top of the spring unit.

We're just throwing it all the way over,

putting it around us corners.

- That's it. - Nice and tight.

And then, you'll put yours around the bottom then.

I'll put on the top.

[GREGG WALLACE] Folder in position,

it's now attached to the springs in the core unit,

using a surprisingly traditional method.

Now we're going to hand stitch the bed.

- Hand stitch? - Yes,

using a 12-inch needle that

- is razor sharp on both sides. - Show me how to do it, boss.

All right, so what we do is pull off three arms lengths

of string, thread this needle.

[GREGG WALLACE] Using a super strong nylon thread,

the hand-sewn seam is an additional measure

to hold the border firmly in place and secure the springs.

That's going to take forever.

Why not do it by machine? Why hand stitching?

Because hand stitching fastens the border through the strings,

wraps around the strings, and holds the border firm to it.

You can't get a machine that will do that.

Wow.

So this company has been making beds for nearly 200 years

and you still, in the 21st century,

you have to hand stitch it.

Gary pushes the foot-long needle in through three core springs,

bringing it back out through the top.

He then threads it back through the side and around the frame.

Well, I'm going to back off and stop talking to you.

Show me the speed you should go at, please.

All right.

This is sort of the speed that we would have to go at.

[GREGG WALLACE] Remarkable.

Are you proud of the job you do?

Uh, I've always taken pride in all the work I do.

The job worth doing is worth doing right.

Do you think people that buy these mattresses

are aware that people like you have actually taken this much?

Uh, I don't think so.

Would you mind very much if I had a go?

Yeah. We'll just start you on another side.

We'll let you go down that side.

You don't want me to continue your line, do you?

- What? - [laughing]

I can sew a button on.

How hard can it be?

I'm never going to get it out there.

It's never going to come out of there, mate.

It's all about the angles.

- Oh. - [GARY SMITH] There you go.

- [GARY SMITH] Yeah, that whole-- - [GREGG WALLACE] Whoa.

This is incredibly-- incredibly difficult.

Not only can you not see where you're going,

you're stitching something that's nearly two foot thick.

As well as having a practical use,

this is actually really attractive,

isn't it, this hand stitching here?

Yeah. It completes the overall look of the bed.

I'll tell you what, I've never really looked at a mattress.

I don't suppose many of us have.

But I'm going to take a much closer interest from now on in.

[music playing]

The mattresses sides now have their outer comfort layer.

But the core itself needs some added luxury too.

More than 1,000 springs provide the basic bounciness.

But when we sleep, we need fine-tuned support.

And our mattresses are about to get more spring than Zebedee

on a pogo stick, in the form of an entire sheet

of micro springs.

This is a comfort layer.

It's thousands of points of contact that molds to your body

to give you better comfort.

There's another layer of springs about to go on.

Another one?

Well, as they say, you can't have too much of a good spring.

These two layers contain an additional 6,048 springs,

bringing the total of our mattress now

to over 13,000.

Springs sorted, there's one last tiresome topic to tackle--

sweat.

No one wants a sweaty siesta, so a layer

of breathable natural fiber is added.

- This is hemp flax. - Hemp flax?

A hemp flax sounds like an indigestion tablet.

Well, hemp is actually from the cannabis family.

Is it legal?

Yes, this is legal.

But, listen, listen, listen,

underneath here, right, it's all quite pretty.

This makes it look like a donkey.

I feel like giving it a carrot and see

if it will go to the other end of the warehouse.

Look at this. Why do you use this stuff?

[GARY SMITH] It's soft.

It's very resilient, and it's antibacterial.

And it also wicks moisture aware.

Antibacterial, why is that important?

It's stops it getting smelly.

If I get hot and sweaty in the bed,

the hemp actually gets rid of the moisture and the smell?

- Yes. - Right.

We got-- we got one, two, three layers of springs.

We got sponge around the corners.

We got a boulder.

- Is that it? - No.

Are you pulling my leg?

The princess would never detect a pea under all this lot,

but unbelievably, there is still one more layer to go on,

- and that's wool. - [music playing]

[CHERRY HEALEY] The wool for our mattresses

is found 22 miles up the road here at the factory's

farm Hornington Manor.

To get a soft cozy mattress,

you need soft beautiful wool.

Farmer Liam McPartland--

Hi, Liam. Lovely to meet you.

Nice to meet you, Cherry.

[CHERRY HEALEY] --looks after a flock of 300 sheep.

What kind of sheep makes great wool?

These sheep in this field are a North of England Mule,

which is a cross between a Blue-faced Leicester ram

and a Swaledale ewe.

They have a very spongy wool and a fantastic crimp.

What is a crimp?

A crimp is the springiness in the wool, which

is fantastic for mattresses.

We don't want a limp soft wool, like what you'd use in clothing.

[CHERRY HEALEY] This natural crimp

is essential to help the wool layer in our mattresses

retain its shape and bounce.

So Cherry, these are the sheep that we're

- going to be clipping today. - Look at those coats.

They need a haircut, pronto. How is this going to work?

We'll just walk the sheep through.

They'll go straight into the pen ready for the clicker man.

That way. Whoa. Ooh, off they go.

Whoa, that was so quick. Wow.

God, bums are wiggling.

- I make a pretty good sheepdog. - LIAM MCPARTLAND: Fantastic.

Great work.

[CHERRY HEALEY] Shearing sheep is a specialist job,

so local pro, Chris, is in charge of the clippers.

So I can see that he's got a bit of a technique to it.

- What is he doing? - You can see, Chris's

left hand is pulling the skin tight,

whilst the right hand moves the hand piece up the sheep.

[CHERRY HEALEY] Why does the skin need to be kept tight?

If the skin isn't tight, then the skin will bunch up like

that, and you could catch it with the clippers.

[CHERRY HEALEY] Each fleece is about two and a half

kilos of wool, and it takes Chris just three minutes

to remove.

In just 45 minutes, we have 15 freshly shorn sheep

and almost 40 kilos of wool.

I just cannot believe how much there is.

Isn't fantastic?

It's so incredibly greasy. What is that?

It's called wool grease, and it gives the wool

some really amazing properties.

- [CHERRY HEALEY] Like what? - Well, it's antibacterial.

Bacteria can't grow on the wool grease.

Right. So it acts as a natural barrier.

I can also see how springy and fluffy it is.

You can see the crimp, if you look closely.

[baaing]

What else is amazing about wool?

You can't burn wool unless you have lots of oxygen.

Wool's fire retardant.

And it has high levels of nitrogen

and water content in it.

And talking to heat, wool is actually

a fantastic regulator of heat.

It keeps you warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

[CHERRY HEALEY] There's no doubt about it,

these farm-fresh fleeces definitely need a wash.

So they head 30 miles down the road

to Thomas Chadwick and Sons--

Hey.

- -where our wool goes into the first of five

industrial washing vats.

The first cycle is at a very toasty 73 degrees Celsius,

which removes stubborn dirt.

Mark Andrews oversees the operation.

- If I've got a wool jumper-- - MARK ANDREWS: Yeah.

- --if I wash it that hot-- - MARK ANDREWS: Yeah, yeah.

MARK ANDREWS: They'll shrink, yeah.

[CHERRY HEALEY] So how are you preventing that?

You're being very careful.

You're not giving it as much agitation

as you would in a washing machine.

[CHERRY HEALEY] At the end of the first wash,

excess water is squeezed from the wool

before it plunges into a second bath filled with detergent.

The soap removes contaminants, such as dirt, sweat,

paint, and the wool grease.

Wool grease, also known as lanolin,

is a valuable ingredient used in cosmetics,

industrial lubricants, and even shoe polish.

So it's filtered from the dirty water and sent to be refined.

After a third and final clean, our wool

is ready for the rinse cycle.

With no trace of farm life remaining,

a brilliant white wool travels through a 10-meter long blow

dryer, emerging at the other end wonderfully fluffy.

What an amazing transformation.

Our sheep have been sheared, washed, blow dried,

and turned into this amazing, soft, fluffy wool.

I could use a lie down after that.

[music playing]

[GREGG WALLACE] From farm to factory,

our wool head straight to fillings

where it's transformed into the top comfort

layer of our mattresses.

I'm back with Matt to unload the wool bales

into the blending machine.

[laughing]

I love this.

It's a beautiful thing, isn't it?

How many sheep do you have to shear to make one bale?

To make one bale--

280 sheep.

[GREGG WALLACE] The wool we're feeding into the hopper

is far too dense to be a soft top layer,

so the fibers are separated out to give them more bounce.

The wool is picked up by a conveyor covered in spikes

and carried into a series of spinning metal combs.

It's a process known as carding.

It's a big comb. [inaudible]

That's not something I know a lot about, combs.

As they spin, the metal teeth detangle and tease

out the tightly packed fibers creating

a light and fluffy mesh.

Our featherweight fleece fibers now travel to the cross lapper,

where they are [inaudible] into five layers.

All this is doing is it's just layering your web on top

of each other, building it up, and to make

the first stages of the pad.

[GREGG WALLACE] The wool pad may be beautifully light,

but it's also very delicate.

To stop it falling apart, some reinforcement is required.

Matt, it's a bed of nails.

That looks like a torture instrument.

What have a load of needles got to do with a soft mattress?

There's 6,000 needles in there.

The needles are penetrating through the material.

Every one has got sly barbs in it.

The barbs hold on, and it pulls back up through the fiber,

so it knits the product together.

So once it's passed through, you get this.

[GREGG WALLACE] The end product is a three-meter wide topper,

which is cut to the standard king-size specification

of two meters by 1.5.

This now looks completely different from the wool

that we started with.

It feels very, very different.

My stacking is a bit rubbish.

Practice makes perfect.

I think I need to take a few of these

around to the next stage.

- Can I grab some? - Yeah.

Can I grab some of yours that are better rolled.

Of course you can. There you go.

[GREGG WALLACE] Three hours and 21 minutes

since our mattress production began--

- Hey. - [inaudible]

- -I'm back with Gary on the mattress assembly line,

putting the wall pad on.

I cannot believe there's this many layers

in one of your mattresses.

There's still another layer yet.

[GREGG WALLACE] The woven ticking is the final addition.

Just got to pin this side first.

[GREGG WALLACE] 30 10-centimeter pins

secure the ticking and all the fillings in place on each side.

That is ludicrous.

It looks all right, but what does it feel like.

[laughing]

This is a good mattress, mate.

- That works for me. - [laughing]

Now this lot all needs securing to the spring core,

which happens at the tufting press.

Here, strings known as tufts are threaded through the mattress

and all its layers to hold it together.

But before all that, we've got to give

the mattress a serious squeeze.

All right, so we're going to compress the bed up to 50%.

You spend hours and hours plumping up the mattress.

Why are you now squashing it down?

I'm squashing it down because we have to get a tufting string

in, and the tufting string is not

long enough to be able to put it in without it being compressed.

So side buttons, press down.

[GREGG WALLACE] That scares me. I feel like it's going to rip.

[GARY SMITH] No. All the time.

[GREGG WALLACE] Once squeezed down from 25 to just 12.5

centimeters, the press is turned 90 degrees,

ready for the 20 centimeter tuft strings to go in.

When the tufts go in, they go straight through the mattress.

It holds all these strings in the place.

It holds all your fillings in place so they don't move,

cause we're human rolling pins.

As we roll over in bed, we can move those fillings.

These tufts prevent that.

This is your tufting needle.

It's 18 inches.

Has it got to go all the way through?

It's got to go all the way through.

[GREGG WALLACE] You've got to get through 11 layers of bed?

Now we fasten the tufting side to the hole

and it's spring loaded.

And I'm putting the tuft string into the center.

- Can I have a go? - Yeah, of course.

So, you're just holding that with the tip of your thumb

until it's into the center of the square.

- [GREGG WALLACE] In there right? - [GARY SMITH] Yeah.

- Give it a push. - [GREGG WALLACE] Oh.

[GARY SMITH] There you go. That's it. Now it's in.

[laughing] [GREGG WALLACE] Hey.

Tuft master, Wallace.

One more. One more. One more.

There's something ridiculously satisfying about spearing

- a fat bed. - [laughing]

32 tuft strings go into a king-sized mattress,

each spaced 35 centimeters apart to spread the tension evenly

across the surface.

- Oh, that's a beauty. - It's perfect.

[GREGG WALLACE] Tufts in place, the tuft heads

are the finishing touch.

[laughing]

Well, it was all big and tough [inaudible]

and now we got these little fluffy pompoms [inaudible]

- A little tufty bit. - All right.

Just pulling strings so [inaudible] is on this side.

Threading through the plastic loop, pulling,

and just let it go.

[GREGG WALLACE] The wool tuft heads stop the strings

from being pulled back through the mattress

when the press is released.

There's no job in this factory that's too strange, is there?

No.

Squash your mattress all flat and put

little silky pompoms on it.

Strung up and tufted on both sides,

the mattress is released.

That's got that kind of leather Chesterfield look now,

- doesn't it? - Yeah, it does.

[GREGG WALLACE] Our mattresses are plumped and primped,

but there's one last flourish--

tape edging.

I'm meeting Mikey Duff, who's been

adding the finishing touches to the beds

here for more than 15 years.

- Nice to meet you. - Hello, Mikey.

- You all right? - I'm good. I'm good. I'm good.

- So this is our final bit. - This is your final bit, yeah.

So if Mikey messes up here, we have to start all over again.

- [GARY SMITH] No pressure. - I'm panicking.

- I'm shaking over here. - [laughing]

Don't mess up, Mikey. This has taken me ages.

I'll try my best.

[GREGG WALLACE] Mikey's job is to join the ticking,

all the layers of padding, and the border

into one seamless taped edge.

So what Mikey's got there is an enormous sewing machine.

And what's that doing? That is stitching the tape

plus the top and the border

- together. - Together, yeah.

So hang on, the most difficult must be

- going around the corner, right? - Going around corner, yeah.

[GREGG WALLACE] Oh, neat, the machine comes

around the whole of the bed.

This specialized sewing machine is mounted on rails

allowing it to be maneuvered through 360 degrees.

Mikey controls it with his knee.

Pressing down on a paddle stops the sewing, leaving his hands

free to stretch the tape around all six

layers of filling and border.

Well, that is finishing it, isn't it?

[GARY SMITH] Yeah.

[GREGG WALLACE] That is finishing it beautifully.

It seems to be tightening up the whole thing, as well, making it

like completely finished shape.

Mikey's machine runs at an incredible 2,800

stitches per minute.

There's no room for error at this stage.

- If you do make a mistake-- - You have start over again.

- Rip it out and start again. - Yeah.

[GREGG WALLACE] Another risk is that the rapidly moving

needle overheats and snaps.

So it's constantly cooled by a stream of compressed air.

I reckon it was easier to get a space rocket to the moon

than it was to make one of your mattresses.

It is remarkable, absolutely remarkable.

[music playing]

Three hours and 41 minutes

after our lorry load of steel rod arrived,

we have a completed mattress.

Thank you.

Beautiful. There it is.

That's our finished mattress.

You know, I can see the things on the outside of it,

like the handles and the stitching,

but no one is going to have any idea of what's in there.

It's quite remarkable, isn't it?

[GARY SMITH] It is-- beautiful.

Now let's get it wrapped. Come on.

[music playing]

[GREGG WALLACE] Checked for the correct number

of handles, vents, and toughs, we're at our last stop--

distribution,

where I'm meeting factory owner Simon Spinks.

- Simon. - Gregg.

- How are you doing? - Great.

On average, how many mattresses will go

out of the factory every day?

- 500 to 600, a day. - Wow.

Is your business at all seasonal?

[SIMON SPINKS] It is. We sell a lot of mattresses

during the month of January when you see all the adverts on TV

for furniture sales.

But also, September when the nights are getting darker.

We start to nest, ready to sleep for the winter.

[music playing]

So we're at an end.

Should we put our final mattress on the truck?

- I think we should. - Come on.

[music playing]

Oh. Oh.

- There we go. - Right.

- Come on. - Well done.

[GREGG WALLACE] The mattresses from this factory

are bound for bedrooms all over the world,

as far afield as Australia and South Korea.

But back home, it's the southeast

of England that buys the most.

We all sleep on a mattress, and we all

know what one looks like, but how many of us

have actually looked inside and seen what's in it.

Am I impressed?

I'll tell you what, I'll sleep on it.

[music playing]