A new escape room has launched at The Great Big Escape in Dorchester's Brewery Square, as part of a special collaboration with fellow independent business, barber shop Seventh Seal.

Coined 'The Barber of Pope Street', the experience sees participants take the role of Brewery Square's security officers in a chilling, late night setting.

Participants are tasked with identifying the source of an alarm sounding on site, exploring the depths of Seventh Seal to find clues.

Bradley Butterworth, co-founder of The Great Big Escape, commented: "Our escape room concepts centre around assets within our local area, with each room featuring small, recognisable details to create a more realistic and immersive experience.

"Being based at Brewery Square means we're surrounded by a vast range of businesses which give us creative inspiration for different themes. Seventh Seal's unique barber and café offering provoked ideas around creating an unusual, mysterious scene as a set up for a series of intriguing challenges – so we were thrilled to team up with them to make our vision come to life."

Toby Frere, co-owner of Seventh Seal added: "We wanted to make 'The Barber of Pope Street' as authentic as possible and match our shop down to a tee, so we contributed various props including recycled hair product containers.

"The Great Big Escape has done a fantastic job in developing this new escape room and we're delighted to have been involved in creating another engaging offering at Brewery Square."

'The Barber of Pope Street' is one of two themes on offer at The Great Big Escape. Its other experience, 'Hop House Homicide', involves a murder mystery storyline, with its concept paying homage to Brewery Square's historic location.

Bradley added: "Since opening last year, our escape rooms have been a big hit with the Dorchester community – with more than 500 teams take on our rooms over the past 11 months.

"It's great to welcome both residents and employees from other Brewery Square businesses through our doors regularly.

"Our escape room themes change periodically to offer something different to our customers, and our collaboration with Seventh Seal is the first of many we hope to do with other businesses in the coming months.

"We can't wait to work closely with more like-minded businesses and bring more exciting experiences to Dorchester."

To find out more about The Great Big Escape's new experience, visit https://thegreatbigescape.com/

For more information about Brewery Square businesses, visit https://brewerysquare.com/