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Mill workers busy in Earlys blanket factory in Witney

Lottery helps fund project to remember role of Witney blankets in colonising Canada, writes CHRIS KOENIG

Blankets and rugs may be rarer in British and Canadian homes than they once were, having been superseded by the duvet, but the part that the so-called blanketeers of Witney played in bringing about British dominion of Canada should not be forgotten.

In order to help make sure that it won't be, The Heritage Lottery Fund has just awarded £39,000 to the Children's International Arts Organisation (CIAO), an Oxfordshire charity, to help fund its project, Journey of a Blanket, which will involve exchange visits between Witney and Fort William in north Ontario.

King Charles II set up the Hudson's Bay Company by Royal Charter in 1670 to explore and trade with the native people of North America, and in particular to exploit the lucrative fur trade which was then largely dominated by the French.

Already in 1681 the charter was proving good news for the people of Witney. In that year the company ordered its first 45 pairs of blankets from blanket maker Thomas Empsome.

But good news for Witney was bad news for the Canadian beaver. Over the next 300 years the Witney Blanket Weavers Company developed the famous Hudson's Bay Company points blanket.

Such pure wool blankets, woven from the wool of Cotswold sheep and much prized by native Americans, were edged with coloured points, or stripes, which indicated their weight, size, and exactly how many beaver pelts they were worth.

In effect, the blankets, with their traditional design of brightly coloured stripes top and bottom - recalling the points system - became a sort of money between the British and Canadian people.

As recently as 1935 Ethel Carleton Williams, writing in Companion into Oxfordshire, noted that on the approach to Witney the visitor was greeted with the sight of blankets stretched on poles to dry.

She added: "A visit to Witney without seeing a blanket factory would be like watching a performance of Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark."

Since 2002, when the last factory (Earlys) finally closed - out-fleeced by the sheep of Australia - she would of course have to do just that. The town which held its own against the great mills of Yorkshire for so many centuries has now seen most of its mills redeveloped for industries contributing to the knowledge-based economy.

Across the Atlantic in Fort William, situated on Lake Superior's Thunder Bay, the economy has undergone similar changes, from trapping and forestry to high-tech. So the project of charting exactly how their forebears worked will be valuable for children in both places.

One reason why the Witney industry survived so long against competition from the North of England mills, which were nearer the coal fields that supplied the energy, was that labour relations were comparatively good. William Cobbett on his Rural Ride of 1826 famously ranted against the Witney blanket bosses, saying that new machines had put hundreds of home workers in outlying cottages out of work, but there is no record of Luddites destroying machinery in Witney - even if the death of Edmund Wright, who introduced the water-powered loom at New Mill in the first decade of the 19th century seems suspicious: he fell into his own wheel and some say his ghost still haunts the place For further information on the Journey of a Blanket project contact info@ciaofestival.org.uk or call 01865 790993.

10:19am Thursday 8th May 2008

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