The shop that's stuffed London pets for 40 years

“A squirrel would be around £200, depending on position and setting”

Photo credit: eilidh_wag

Morning — anyone who's walked along Essex Road in Islington has probably peered through the windows of Get Stuffed, only to have dozens of animals stare back. The taxidermist is a bizarre sight on an otherwise ordinary north London high street. It's equal parts spectacular — a pocket of artisanal craftsmanship in a mostly commercial city — and macabre.

While some animals in the collection are exotic, Get Stuffed’s speciality is household pets. The desire to preserve one’s cat in a permanent sleeping position or to turn one’s dog into a rug might seem esoteric. But in fact, enough Londoners have sought out such a service over the years that the shop is now in its fifth decade of operation.

Unfortunately, Get Stuffed is only open by appointment, but luckily writer Joshua Taylor booked a slot for your Spy read today. What he learnt about the shop that stuffs London's pets is below.

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Inside a London pet taxidermist

By Joshua Taylor

Photo credit: Get Stuffed

For any Londoners looking to get their pet taxidermied, I’m afraid I can only give you a ballpark figure for the services of Get Stuffed in Islington. Owner Robert Sinclair was understandably reluctant to delve too precisely into pricing, given the significant variation in the size, condition, and pose wanted of the specimen. The only figure I could extract from Robert was: “Something like a squirrel would be around £200, depending on position and setting”. It’s a unit of measurement that just raises more questions — do people keep squirrels as pets? What counts as 'something like a squirrel'? But I at least learned pricing isn't necessarily linear. Your dog the size of 10 squirrels might cost a fair bit more than £2,000.

If you have ever sat on the left-hand side of the 38 bus to Clapton Pond as it heads north up Essex Road, you will probably have seen Get Stuffed. Something of a local legend, this aptly named taxidermist has been stuffing and preserving Londoners' dead pets for over 40 years. 

Situated next to a butchers, fishmongers, and cheesemongers (the irony writes itself) on the A104, Get Stuffed is home to a taxidermied menagerie of biblical proportions: upright bunnies, a motley flock of birds in various stages of flight, and a Jack Russell all inhabit the front window of this anomalous establishment. More exotic specimens are also on display — bears, big cats, an alligator head — but Get Stuffed specialises in “pet work”, a large selection of which can be seen on the shop’s online ‘cats and dogs’ gallery. It is one of those small London businesses whose very existence says something about the wide variety of eclectic tastes in the city. But one wonders: exactly how big is the capital’s pet stuffing market?