DEEDS AND DOCUMENTS FOR EARLY'S BLANKET HALL, WITNEY

Scope and Content

The Blanket Hall was built in 1721 for the Blanket Weavers' Company. The ground floor was used for the weighing and measuring of blankets, while the first floor contained the 'Great Room' - for hosting meetings of the guild - and an Assistants' Room.

After the Blanket Weavers' Company was disbanded, the Blanket Hall was purchased by Edward Early in 1847. It passed through a succession of owners and was used by a variety of businesses including a brewery and mineral water factory and as one of the offices of Witney Urban District Council.

It was purchased from Charles Early & Marriott (Witney) Limited in 1975, and then became a private house. Following the death in 2011 of the building's owner, Brian Crawford, in 2011 the Blanket Hall was given to a local charity, the Bartlett Taylor Trust, with hopes of redeveloping it as a museum or heritage centre for the blanket industry in Witney.

This collection is formed of two accessions. Accession 4180 was given to the office by Brian Crawford in November 1996. Further records were deposited by his executors as part of a larger accession, 6184, in July 2013. Items originally deposited as part of accession 4180 and previously catalogued as P21/2, relating to New Mills and Crawley Meadow, were recatalogued as part of the larger B1 Early's of Witney collection (B1/5/18D) to form a single, continuous sequence of deeds

For records of the Blanket Weavers' Company and the Early Blanket Company see collection B1.

Catalogued by Mark Priddey, Sept.1997, with additions by Hannah Jones, Sep. 2014 and revisions in January 2015.

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