In 1711, Queen Anne granted the Witney weavers a charter to form a company regulating the products and business activities of the weavers within a twenty mile radius of Witney. For the first few years, the Witney Company of Blanket Weavers mec at the Staple Hall Inn and other locations around the town, until building their own premises, the Blanket Hall, in 172l. A large oil painting of Queen Anne still hangs in the Great Room upstairs in the Hall, just as she did in the early 18th century when the company accounts showed money spent on 'cleaning and varnishing Queen Anne'.

The Blanket Hall is built with a country Baroque façade incorporating a splendid one-handed clock, below which are the arms of the Company of Blanket Weavers and a plaque commemorating John Collier, the first Master in 1721.

The Blanket Hall's chief purpose was as an inspection house where blankets had to be brought for authentication against the standards that the Company set at their meetings in the Great Room upstairs. Until the Corn Exchange was built in 1863, The Great Room was also the principal secular public room in the town. It was the scene of many public meetings, including one held in 1830 to repudiate slavery.

With mechanisation, the new mills took over the regulation of the trade, and the Blanket Weavers' Company eventually came to an end in 1847. Since then the Blanket Hall has been a brewery, lemonade factory, engineering shop, hardware store and dancing school.

The Blanket Hall is now restored, and once again welcomes visitors to tour the building, explore its illustrious past, enjoy the riverside garden and, of course, the famous Blanket Hall Pieshop.