What is a Witney blanket?
The obvious answer to this question is ‘a blanket made in Witney’ but the matter is rather more complicated than that: blankets and blanketing were made in Witney, Oxfordshire, for several hundred years and during that time very many different sizes, patterns, qualities, colours, materials and methods were used to make them. Blankets were not made by a single company or business but by lots of separate individuals and firms over the years. In turn these had a broad range of clients and customers that put them to lots of different uses. ‘A Witney blanket’ meant different things to different people and its meaning also changed over time. Label from a ‘Witnedown’ blanket made by Smith and Philips’. One definition, taken from a 1950s encyclopaedia, describes three types of wool blanket of which the finest quality is described as: ‘the raised blankets of the Witney type, in which a soft spun yarn and long fibred weft is employed. In the finishing process of the Witney blanket the fibres are
