Axminster

This little town grew up around the junction of two important Roman roads, the Fosse and the Icknield, and was important in medieval times because of its Minster beside the River Axe. Its name has entered the language as the synonym for a very superior kind of floor-covering, which first appeared in the early 1750s. Wandering around London’s Cheapside market, an Axminster weaver named Thomas Whitty was astonished to see a huge Turkish carpet, 12 yards long and 8 yards wide. Returning to the sleepy little market town where he was born, Thomas spent months puzzling over the mechanics of producing such a seamless piece of work. By 1755 he had solved the problem, and on midsummer’s day that year the first of these luxurious carpets was revealed to the world. The time and labour involved was so prodigious that the completion of each carpet was celebrated by a procession to St Mary’s Church and a ringing peal of bells. Ironically, one distinguished purchaser of an Axminster carpet was the Sultan of Turkey who, in 1800, paid the colossal sum of £1000 for a particularly fine specimen. But the inordinately high labour costs involved in producing such exquisite hand-tufted carpets crippled Whitty’s company. In 1835, their looms were sold to a factory at Wilton. That was the end of Axminster’s pre-eminence in the market for top-quality carpets, but echoes of those glorious years still reverberate. St Mary’s Church must be the only house of worship in Christendom whose floor is covered with a richly-woven carpet.

Opposite the church is the former court-house, which is now home to the Axminster Museum where the old police cells can be visited, and there are collections of vintage agricultural tools and Axminster carpets.