page_title: Hailey, Oxfordshire
section_title: Wool
hierarchical_section_title: Hailey, Oxfordshire / Economic and social history / Wool
caption_attribution_description: English: New Mill, on the River Windrush in the parish of Hailey, West Oxfordshire, England. There was a fulling mill on this site in the 13th and 14th centuries. There has been a woollen mill on this site since the 1580s but the present mill is more modern. New Mill was part of Earlys, blanket makers of Witney, from 1818 until the 1960s. It is now the premises for tour operator Audley Travel.
context_page_description: Hailey is a village and civil parish about 2 miles north of Witney, Oxfordshire. The village comprises three neighbourhoods: Middletown on the main road between Witney and Charlbury, Poffley End on the minor road to Ramsden and Delly End on Whiting's Lane. The parish extends from the River Windrush in the south, almost to the village of Ramsden and the hamlet of Wilcote in the north, and it includes the hamlet of New Yatt. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 1,208.
context_section_description: From the early 13th century there was a fulling mill on the Windrush in the south of the parish. It was run down in the latter half of the century, seems to have ceased trading by 1318 and may have been demolished. In the 1580s Thomas Box of Witney bought Burycroft, the land next to the former mill site, and had a new leat dug and mill built. By 1589 it was in production, and it has been called New Mill ever since. From the early 17th century, trades including fulling or tucking, broadweaving and clothing are frequently recorded in Hailey.
  By the middle of the 18th century blanket-making dominated Hailey's wool trade as it did Witney's. By the early 19th century more families seem to have worked in trade and industry than in agriculture. In the early history of the trade many weavers worked at home, but in the 18th and 19th centuries New Mill increasingly dominated Hailey's cloth trade. This was despite fires damaging the mill in the late 18th century and in 1809, 1818 and 1883.
  The Early family of Witney blanket-makers were renting at least part of the mill by 1818 and operating the whole premises by the 1820s. Legally the mill was in two parts, and in 1830 the Earlys bought one part copyhold and the other part leasehold. Earlys bought the freehold in 1894 and continued blanket-making there until the mid-1960s. It has since been converted to other trades.
caption: New Mill on the River Windrush
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