Mill workers' housing

Cape Terrace in Gloucester Place, which housed many Witney blanket workers.

Unlike many English mill towns, Witney in the 19th century did not develop a huge network of streets containing tightly packed, back-to-back terraced brick housing. Instead, blanket workers rented small stone cottages that were generally built in short rows or grouped around a yard. Housing of this type was scattered around the town and nearby villages and was owned by many different landlords. Most of the cottages would have been of poor quality, consisting of two or three small rooms with little lighting, a shared well and communal toilet.

Some stone terraces were also built in response to the rising population throughout the 19th century, such as at Corn Street and on land between the High Street and the river. By the 1950s, though, these buildings were considered unfit for people to live in and were pulled down [1].

In 1838 the blanket manufacturer John Early gave evidence about Witney weavers' housing to a government enquiry into lives and working conditions in the textile districts of England saying,

'Some of the houses are neat and comfortable but it is not a general term to be applied to them'.

Cape Terrace (in Gloucester Place, Witney) was built around 1865 by Bartlett's, a local firm of builders, and was of a reasonable standard, although it was not intended specifically for blanket workers. It was sited close to Witney Mill and Bridge Street Mill, however, and the 1901 census records that it was inhabited by several weavers and two loom-tuners [2].

A portrait of Edward Cole Early in the early 20th century.

Edward Cole Early and James Harold Early created the Witney Mills Housing Society in the 1920s. The Society built Springfield Park, a development of twenty houses for mill workers, in 1926. The rent was subsidised by the Government but by 1928 only nine tenants were actually working for the company; it may have been that wages in the industry were too low for most of the workers to afford the rents. Yet eight further houses were built in 1929, which were so over-subscribed that lots had to be drawn, and later in 1961 five bungalows were built for retired members of the company [3].

Other homes for blanket workers were erected at The Crofts (near Walker's blanket factory), Mill Street and Lowell Place, but in general only a very small proportion of housing in Witney was purpose-built for blanket workers.

References
[1] Gott and Gott 2004: p47
[2] Townley 2004: p43
[3] Plummer and Early 1969: p169-171