Welcome to Witney Loom

Roman roads carve straight across the Cotswolds in a grid as our wool cloth was treasured by the Emperors who made it their monopoly to set the price of the British wool cloaks. Their new breed of sheep called the Cotswold lion was a cross of the Roman and local Celtic flocks and had softer, longer and finer thread. Then the Saxons came with new looms, exporting the wool cloth through their capital city of Winchester to Flanders and Europe.

The fine cloth trade attracted the Norman nobility, with the Bishop of Winchester’s palace being built in Witney soon after their arrival in England. By the time of Henry III, clothmaking in the area was literally fit for a king.

The excellent soft but hardy Witney Point blankets were a natural preference for all those facing the rigorous winters in Canada and the Americas. For the English traders the Point Blankets of Witney were the staple of trade as they explored the New World. The striped colours as well as the clear point system indicating the weight and quality made the blankets a favourite in the barter for furs. The point blankets from Witney and the Hudson Bay Company share a long and fascinating history together. The blankets of Witney were also exported to Africa, India and Australia, where sleeping under a fine wool blanket even in warmer climes was more comfortable thanks to the breathability of raised nap (or fluffy) wool.

After the Tuckers had finished, tenterers racked their lengths of damp blanket cloth out to dry and stretch on the tent frames –stockfulls - and would have to run out if rain threatened, so living their lives on-tenterhooks. The valley of the Windrush was decorated with rows and rows of Blanket tentering over generations. The making of blankets was not just the weaving of cloth, but a whole series of stages from rearing of sheep, to carding, spinning and quilling the yarn, fulling the cloth, raising the nap to whip stitching. The story of Witney blanket making is emblematic of our heritage of farming, craft, commerce and industry.