TRADE AND INDUSTRY 1900–1945
During the earlier 20th century Witney's economy
remained chiefly dependent on the blanket industry and
to a lesser extent on glove manufacture, and seems
generally to have thrived despite a slight fall in population, with relatively limited unemployment even during
the depression of the 1930s. (fn. 1) A Witney chamber of trade
and commerce, founded by local shopkeepers and store
managers in 1920, acquired 22 members, though a
traders' exhibition proposed for 1934 was abandoned
through lack of interest. (fn. 2) A few significant new businesses opened in the 1920s and 1930s, but, apart from
piecemeal modernization in the blanket industry, there
were few structural changes before the Second World
War, when one or two manufacturing firms moved to
Witney partly to escape the London Blitz. By the mid
1940s the town was 'primarily industrial', with a
significant part of its female labour, particularly in the
blanket factories and laundries, drawn from
surrounding villages. By contrast a substantial proportion of the male population worked elsewhere, principally in the maintenance unit at Brize Norton airfield or
in the Oxford car factories, and there was already a
perceived need for new industry within the town. (fn. 3)
The Blanket Industry 1900–1945
Throughout the earlier 20th century blanketmanufacture continued to employ large numbers: in
1900 there were around 250 looms and 800 workers,
half of them employed by Charles Early & Co., and by
1922 there were over 1,000 workers and 400 looms. (fn. 4)
Despite recession the industry still employed over a
thousand in 1937, when most of the 400 weavers were
women, many of them from outside the town. (fn. 5) By then
Witney produced some 700,000 pairs of blankets a year,
between a fifth and a quarter of national output; (fn. 6)
capacity remained broadly similar after the Second
World War when the main firms operated 475 looms
with 322 weavers, (fn. 7) and presumably large numbers were
employed in other processes.
During the early 20th century steam- and waterpower was supplemented by gas engines and (at Mount
Mills) by an oil engine, and from 1934 Witney Mill was
powered by electricity supplied from a turbo-alternator
and the national grid. (fn. 8) Rotary milling machines
replaced fulling stocks for shrinking and felting blankets,
and, more significantly, coloured blankets were introduced, requiring considerable expansion of dyeing
plants. (fn. 9) Charles Early & Co., William Smith & Co., and
Marriott & Sons remained the chief manufacturers,
accounting for 90 per cent of the town's production in
1949; (fn. 10) in the mid 1920s Smith's merged with the large
Manchester wholesalers J. & N. Philips to form a
combined firm, (fn. 11) and in 1924, following the failure of a
blanket-making enterprise by the glove-makers Pritchett
and Webley, Marriott & Sons acquired Worsham Mill in
Asthall, developing it as a willeying, spinning, and (later)
warehousing unit. (fn. 12) All three firms became private
limited companies by 1910, though they remained
essentially family firms until after the Second World
War. (fn. 13) A fourth company, James Walker and Sons Ltd of
Mirfield (Yorks.), opened a factory at the Crofts in 1933,
and in the late 1940s had 50 looms, 10 per cent of
Witney's total; (fn. 14) the initiative allowed the company to
exploit the Witney trade-name, which, since a court case
of 1908–9, could be used only for products manufactured in Witney rather than for a generic type of
blanket, a dispute which illustrated the widespread
esteem in which Witney blankets were held. (fn. 15) The Witney
Blanket Company continued as a mail-order supplier of
blankets, bedding, clothes, and footwear, moving in
1921 to a new factory at the Leys where, by the 1930s, it
also manufactured specialist mattresses, quilts, and
feather beds, and ran a successful blanket-cleaning
service. (fn. 16)
44. Bridge Street Mills (W. Smith & Co.): (a) The street frontage, built probably c. 1899.
(b) Bridge Street Mills from the south-west in 1999.
45. Witney Blanket Company premises, c. 1935.
The industry's main product continued to be white or
coloured blankets, dispatched by rail and sold worldwide. In the 1930s South Africa was a notable market,
though most blankets were sold to British firms. (fn. 17) Rugs,
mops, and horse-collar cloths were still made. (fn. 18)
Increasing trade before 1914 was boosted during the
First World War by large government orders, which
pushed all three manufacturers to full capacity and
which were shared on a cooperative basis, taking precedence over civilian orders. (fn. 19) War bonuses were introduced by Early's and presumably other firms, together
with special rates for women undertaking men's jobs,
who received half the standard man's wage. (fn. 20) Continued
buoyancy in the early 1920s, reflected in new building by
Early's at Witney Mills, was followed by marked recession during the depression of the early 1930s; between
1929 and 1932 Early's sales fell by 36 per cent, forcing
introduction of a three-day working week. (fn. 21) In the later
1930s there was nevertheless a partial recovery, (fn. 22) with
unemployment in Witney reportedly 'lower than in any
other town of comparable size in the country'. (fn. 23) From
1939 the industry was again on a war-footing, with
Early's and Marriott's producing mostly seamen's blankets: in 1944 some 85 per cent of 718,000 blankets
produced were to government contract. Smith and
Philips' Bridge Street factory was requisitioned in 1941
and temporarily converted to other uses, some looms
and workers being transferred to Early's and Marriott's,
while Walker and Sons closed its Witney factory to
concentrate on production in Yorkshire. (fn. 24)
During the interwar years the longstanding paternalism of Witney's manufacturers towards their
employees (fn. 25) was directed to industrial relations and
improved social provision, with weekly foremen's meetings at Early's attended by at least one director. Wages
were negotiated between unions at the West of England
District Joint Industrial Council, where conditions at
Witney Mills were generally accepted to be good; Early's
often acted independently, however, agreeing in 1931 to
'treat each case on its merits'. (fn. 26) A profit-sharing scheme
introduced by Early's in 1920, before such arrangements
became common, continued until 1965, (fn. 27) and in the
1920s and 1930s a company Provident Fund made
individually-determined payments to employees in
cases of accident or illness. (fn. 28) The Witney Mills Housing
Society, established by James Harold and Edward Cole
Early in 1925, aimed to meet the housing needs of
employees. Relations generally remained good with a
genuine sense of community, despite strikes at New Mill
in 1919, and at Smith and Philips' Bridge Street and
Crawley mills in 1936. (fn. 29)
Other Trades and Industries 1900–45
Except for a universal decline in domestic service, until
the late 1930s the overall pattern of employment within
the town remained much as in the late 19th century,
with a large range of retailers, and the continuation of
important firms such as the builders Bartlett Brothers,
the ironmongers and builders Leigh and Sons, Young's
engineering, Marriott's coal business, and the Eagle
Brewery. (fn. 30) Pritchett and Co.'s glove factory at Newland,
rebuilt following a disastrous fire in 1926, continued
until the late 1930s, when the premises were sold to
Compton and Webb, a London firm of cap and uniform
manufacturers; thereafter glove-making was continued
by F. W. Looker, a former Pritchett's manager, whose
firm on High Street employed out-workers in the town
and surrounding villages in the 1940s. (fn. 31) Other new
firms, some also drawing on outside labour, (fn. 32) included
the Witney Steam Laundry on Corn Street, opened
about 1907, the nearby Swan Laundry, opened in the
former Colliers' blanket premises in 1929, and a
Buckinghamshire sausage manufacturer (G. Brazil)
established at Gloucester Place in 1934, moving in 1947
to a larger factory at Corn Street. (fn. 33) A mail-order
company, selling bedding and blankets but known later
for furniture manufacture, was established by Thomas
Wesley Barrell in 1934. (fn. 34)
The introduction of new engineering firms,
significant for Witney's later industrial development,
arose directly from the Second World War, Crawford
Collets Ltd and the West London Optical and Tool
Company both moving to Witney in 1940–1 to escape
the London Blitz. The former, established with an
imported workforce at the disused union workhouse
just west of the town, made industrial collets for
machine tools; it continued its expansion after the war,
and by 1963, when new machine shops were opened on
the site, exported to over 200 countries. The West
London Tool Company, based at No. 58 High Street and
continuing in the 1960s, made spectacle lenses, small
optical tools, and, later, measuring instruments and
viewing panels. (fn. 35) The De Havilland aircraft company,
hampered by wartime restrictions at its chief manufacturing base at Hatfield (Herts.), opened a factory in 1939
at Witney aerodrome, which had been established west
of the town during the First World War and later used as
a flying training school. The factory became a repair unit
for military aircraft the following year, and from 1941–2
overhauled Hurricanes and Spitfires, turning out nearly
1,500 fully repaired aircraft by 1945; at its peak there
were 1,200 workers, many of them transferred from the
De Havilland factory at Hatfield. The Witney factory
remained an important local employer until its closure
in 1949, with a workforce of over a thousand. (fn. 36) The
town's other chief employers in 1948, besides the
still-dominant blanket industry, were a machine-tools
factory (presumably Crawford's), Compton and Webb's
military clothing factory, and Looker's glove factory. (fn. 37)