Witney was once synonymous with the local blanket industry which at its peak employed over 3000 people. Prior to the 19th century, blankets were handmade by artisans who had passed down their skills over many generations. But with the arrival of the industrial revolution, things changed rapidly.

The first mill-owner to install a water-powered spinning machinery in Witney was industrialist Edmund Wright, who did so at New Mill on the river between Witney and Crawley. Wright's machines could churn out blankets far faster and cheaper than the cottage industries around Witney could hope to compete with, and soon many local weavers found themselves out of work and destitute.

Much anger was directed towards Edmund Wright as the architect of all this, and many local weavers surely wished curses down upon Wright's head. But the locals did not have to wait long for fate, or perhaps karma, to kick in.

In 1808, Edmund Wright fell into the mill pond at his own mill and drowned. While this did not stop the wheels of progress turning, I'm sure many impoverished blanket workers would have seen it as poetic justice that Wright died beneath the mill that they saw as the cause of their suffering.

Wright was buried in a manner befitting a man of his wealth and status, but his body had not been in the ground long before rumours began to swirl that Wright was not resting quietly in his grave.

People started to claim that they'd seen a body floating in the mill pond, right where Edmund Wright's body was found. It was believed locally that the drowned ghost of Edmund Wright was haunting the stretch of water that ran, and still runs, beneath the mill buildings at New Mill.

My main source for this haunting is Joe Robinson's highly entertaining Oxfordshire Ghosts (2000). Although Wright's ghost is mainly associated with the mill pond, Robinson also suggests that the mill buildings themselves might also be haunted by Wright.

The buildings themselves were damaged or destroyed by fire no fewer than 3 times in the century following Edmund Wright's death, leading some so speculate that Wright's actions had resulted in a curse befalling New Mill.

The buildings that stand on this site today are of a thoroughly modern variety, and are home to a range of thoroughly modern businesses. In spite of these changes, the same mill course in which Edmund Wright met his end still flows beneath the buildings. I can't help but wonder if employees ever catch a glimpse of something strange in the mill pond on their way to the carpark of an evening!