The Witney and District Museum
About
The Witney and District Museum stands in Gloucester Court Mews, a courtyard off the High Street in the west Oxfordshire town whose name was for three hundred years effectively a trade description. Witney blankets were made here from at least the seventeenth century until 2002, and at the industry's height the town's mills, dominated by the Early and Marriott families, supplied blankets across Britain and to markets as distant as North America. The museum exists largely to record that industry and the town that grew around it.
The blanket collection covers the whole process — sorting and scouring the fleece, spinning, weaving on hand and later power looms, fulling in the mills along the Windrush, teasel raising, shearing, and the finishing and packing that sent Witney blankets out under trade marks recognised nationally. Looms, tools, samples, pattern books, mill photographs and company records are supported by the recollections of people who worked in the mills, many of whom were still doing so when Early's finally closed. The Blanket Hall on the High Street, built in 1721 for weighing and measuring blankets under the authority of the weavers' company, is part of the same story.
Beyond blankets, the museum documents the wider district: the Windrush valley villages, agriculture and rural trades, brewing, glove making — a significant Witney and Woodstock industry — quarrying, and the coming of the railway. Displays cover the parish church of St Mary, the medieval market and buttercross, schooling, local government and the town's experience of both world wars. There are archaeological finds from the surrounding parishes and a photographic archive of the town and villages.
The museum is a volunteer-run charity, free to enter, with a garden behind the building and a programme of changing exhibitions and events. It opens seasonally, Wednesday to Saturday from April to October, with opening subject to volunteer availability outside that. Its local studies material is used regularly by family and house historians researching Witney and the surrounding villages.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- The museum opens seasonally, Wednesday to Saturday from April to October, and closes for the winter — check before travelling outside the season.
- Opening depends on volunteer availability even within the season; the website is the best guide.
- Admission is free; the donation box supports a volunteer-run charity.
- Combine the visit with Cogges Manor Farm Museum, about twelve minutes' walk away, for a fuller day in Witney.
- Walk down the High Street to see the Blanket Hall of 1721 and the buttercross after visiting the blanket displays — the objects make far more sense in situ.
- Some upper areas are reached by stairs; contact the museum in advance if you need to discuss access.
- There is no railway station in Witney; buses from Oxford are frequent and stop on the High Street.
- If you are researching a Witney family, a mill worker or a town building, contact the museum ahead so the photographic and local studies material can be prepared.
Highlights
Three Hundred Years of Witney Blankets
For three centuries Witney meant blankets, and the museum's central displays follow the whole manufacturing sequence. Fleece was sorted and scoured, spun, woven, then fulled in mills driven by the river Windrush, raised with teasels to bring up the nap, sheared level and finished for sale. Looms, hand tools, teasel frames, samples and pattern books are shown alongside photographs of the mills at work.
The industry ended in 2002 when Early's closed, within living memory of many of the people who gave the museum its material, and the displays draw heavily on their recollections of mill work.
Early's, Marriott's and the Mill Families
Witney's blanket trade was dominated for generations by a small number of families, above all the Earlys, whose firm traced its origins to the seventeenth century and remained in business until 2002 — one of the longest continuous runs of family manufacturing in Britain. The museum holds company records, trade marks, advertising, catalogues and photographs documenting how these firms organised production, competed with one another, marketed the Witney name and eventually consolidated.
The displays also address what it meant for a whole town's employment to rest on a handful of family firms making a single product.
The Blanket Hall and the Weavers' Company
The Blanket Hall was built on the High Street in 1721 for the Company of Blanket Weavers of Witney, which had been incorporated by charter a decade earlier with powers to weigh, measure and mark blankets made in the town. It was, in effect, a quality-control and trade-regulation building, and its existence shows how seriously the trade took the protection of the Witney name.
The museum interprets the hall, the company's charter and its regulation of the trade, explaining a form of industrial self-government that predates the factory system by a considerable margin.
Gloves, Brewing and Other Witney Trades
Blankets were not the town's only manufacture. Glove making was a significant west Oxfordshire industry, with much of the sewing done by outworkers in surrounding villages, and Witney also supported brewing, quarrying, tanning, corn milling and the ordinary trades of a market town. The museum's displays cover these through tools, products, photographs and business records, and make the point that the district's economy was more diversified than the blanket reputation suggests — a diversity that mattered a great deal when the woollen trade contracted.
Collections
The Witney and District Museum documents the west Oxfordshire town of Witney and the villages of the Windrush valley. Its principal strength is the Witney blanket industry, made in the town from at least the seventeenth century until the closure of Early's in 2002: the collections include looms and hand tools, teasel frames, blanket samples and pattern books, trade marks and advertising, company records and mill photographs, together with oral history from former mill workers.
Material relating to the Blanket Hall of 1721 and the Company of Blanket Weavers records the trade's self-regulation.
Wider collections cover glove making, brewing, quarrying and rural trades; agriculture in the Windrush valley villages; St Mary's church, the market and the buttercross; archaeological finds from the district including the medieval bishop's palace; and an extensive photographic archive.
Witney Blankets
The manufacturing process, the mill families, the Blanket Hall and the end of the industry in 2002.
Town and District
Witney's market, church and civic history alongside the villages and farming of the Windrush valley.
Trades and Industries
Glove making, brewing, quarrying, milling and the other manufactures of west Oxfordshire.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.