Witney Through Time

Witney grew up as the result of deliberate planning on the part of successive Bishops of Winchester, a spacious, wedge-shaped market area being laid out parallel to the river Windrush. The whole area was surrounded by a drainage ditch known as Emma''s Dyke. By the end of the Middle Ages it had grown into a populous market town with a developing blanket industry, and 1800 there were five textile mi...