Stoke pots, Nottingham lace, Luton hats. In years gone by, many English towns became specialist centres of manufacturing. Whatever else they might produce, even big cities like Birmingham (famous for its small metal goods, from jewellery to boxes) or Sheffield (steel and cutlery), became widely known for particular industries. Witney in Oxfordshire looks at first glance like a typical small rural town with its Corn Exchange. But what made Witney well known all over the country was its woollen blankets. In the winter, Witney kept you warm at night. A short walk from the town centre the buildings of Early’s blanket mill still exist, and nearer still to the heart of the town is the Blanket Hall, built in 1720 as the headquarters of the Company of Witney Blanket Weavers. Inside was a room where the weavers came to have their products weighed and measured, to ensure that their work was up to standard; there was also a room for meetings and facilities for catering for blanket makers’ feasts.
The architecture of the Blanket Hall is early Georgian with a baroque flavour. This is not the full-blown baroque that we see at Vanbrugh buildings such as Blenheim Palace (not far away), but a small-town version with curved (segmental) window heads, pronounced but plain window surrounds, a pediment that is broken at the bottom to accommodate the clock, and a skyline punctuated with ball finials. The frontage is built of good ashlar but the side just visible in my photograph is of rougher stone, because most people won’t notice.
The architect is said to have been William Townsend (or Townesend) of Oxford. Townsend was a member of a family of master masons and builders who worked in Oxford in the late-17th and 18th centuries, working on numerous colleges and other buildings. They formed a locally important building dynasty comparable to the Smiths of Warwick, the Patys of Bristol and the Bastards of Blandford Forum. William Townsend was primarily a mason, and probably worked in tandem with an architect on his larger buildings, but here he may have taken sole responsibility. The baroque front that he created in Witney is in a style I’ve seen a number of times in small Oxfordshire towns – Chipping Norton, for example, has some examples. It makes a grand enough impression to stand out next to the rural-looking buildings on either side, but is not so ornate as to be showy. The blanket-makers, one feels, were happy to display substantial wealth, but not in a way that’s too grandiloquent or boastful. Fit for purpose, reassuring, does the job well: like the blankets, in fact.
