Witney

About Witney

Welcome to the Witney edition of The Oxford Magazine.

Like a few of the former weaving towns in Oxford, Witney, the largest of the market towns in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds, is often placed among the best places to live in Britain.

The market square makes a very persuasive case, with its graceful period architecture from the 17th-century Butter Cross, where local women once gathered to sell butter and eggs to the early-18th century town hall across the street built using stone from quarries at Black Bourton. And, not forgetting the Blanket Hall and the Victorian Corn Exchange.

For some local flavour visit the Wychwood Brewery on weekends to be shown around and to taste the much-loved Hobgoblin brown ale. And also Cogges, a working Victorian manor farm right next to Witney that was the set for ‘Yew Tree Farm’ in Downton Abbey’s 2014 filming. It’s beamed 17th-century barns ooze period charm.