Dover Castle | King Henry II Bedspread

Client: Dover Castle, English Heritage

Scope: Recreation of Tactile Props

We always enjoy working with the English Heritage team at Dover Castle to help keep their visitor experience looking amazing at all times. Dover Castle aims to present the Great Tower as it would have appeared during Henry II reign when he frequently stayed at the castle.

The aim of the original project back in 2009 was to enable all visitors to have a greater tactile and interactive experience with the items enabling the team at the Tower to remove the ropes which acted as a barrier to the collections, pretty revolutionary stuff!

Since reopening 13 years ago, these tactile exhibits have been handled by millions of visitors who have enjoyed the experience of life in the castle during the 12th century. One of the exhibits which has received a lot of wear and tear was King Henry II bed spread which due to it being super soft squirrel fur, was very tactile and hard for passing hands to resist! This project has been quite the challenge for our team. Challenge No1 was nobody was keen to skin Squirrel Nutkin. Our clever and resourceful propose team found a supplier of grey squirrel fur from Germany and skillfully dyed and treated it until it seamlessly replicated red squirrel fur.

The end result is stunning, and we were pleased to deliver this back to Dover Castle where many millions more visitors can imagine what it would have been like to sleep under a squirrel skin cover!