About

Moxon traces its origins to 1556; which was a period of monarchical uncertainty in England. The firm essentially came to prominence during the reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I of England who reigned from 1558 until 1603, primarily as a Cottage industry. At the time, there were three main stages to manufacturing cloth: carding, spinning and weaving.

Established in 1556, the earliest Moxon nurtured their growing relationship with that most natural and healthy of materials; wool, which heralded an era of significant development in handloomed cloth. Over the coming generations, the Moxon family would transform homespun yarn into cloth more than a century before the start of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain.

By the late XVII Century, the already well-established textile industry in Yorkshire benefited from the ever-growing wealth in Europe. During the late XVIII Century, at the height of the great Industrial Revolution, the British textile industry saw unparalleled expansion in both techniques and markets, which brought about increasing pressure to modernise and expand, and saw the nationwide introduction of Shuttle looms.
In 1887, now based in Old Providence Mills in Marsh, Yorkshire, the company had Benjamin H. Moxon at the helm, who could look back with considerable pride upon his ancestor's contribution to cloth-making in the region. He and his successors maintained a steadfast commitment to the development and expansion of specialist and fancy worsted weaving in Huddersfield, relocating in 1889 to Springfield Mills in Kirkburton, Huddersfield. In 1890, Benjamin H. Moxon’s two sons were taken into partnership and the company became known as B. H. Moxon & Sons.

Continuing success saw B. H. Moxon & Sons, as it was then known, relocate midway through the XX Century to Southfield Mills in Kirkburton, Huddersfield. Towards the end of the century, production was cut down considerably. Subsequently, there was an emphasis on Moxon's antiquated and traditional production process which, with the rest of the world's industry entering rapid modernisation, was effectively a movement in the opposite direction. This included the purchase of finest wool bales and a revival of Moxon's traditional involvement with Altai Cashmere. The use of Noble rare fibres such as Mink, Ermine, Beaver and Vicuña was maintained together with the use of natural Silk and Pearl Sliver cottons, specialist weaving keeping with the firm's illustrious history.

Behind the firm's mill, Moxon has two private water reservoirs built over a century ago which, with Yorkshire's year round rainfall, ensure an uninterrupted supply of soft untreated water, historically an essential component in the dyeing and finishing processes of cloth, and one of Moxon's key ingredients today. The freshwater, which has cascaded down the Pennines and into Moxon's water reservoirs, contains natural cloth softening characteristics, largely due to having low concentrations of dissolved salts, a composition unmatched anywhere else in England. The level of water in the water reservoirs is purely dependent on nature and the quantity of precipitation.

As a result of the firm's legendary methods, the cloth manufactured by Moxon is widely regarded as the rarest and most exclusive, which is reflected in its extraordinary prices. The cloth's lack of availability has marked it as somewhat of a unicorn. The firm has also been known to refuse to sell to certain customers as way of maintaining its exclusivity and association with only the very best. An explanation of the cloth's extraordinary price has been attributed to the firm's naturally enforced low production, which must wait a total of three seasons to gather enough fine bales to manufacture a piece. In addition, Moxon's outdated manufacturing takes considerably longer to oversee; a period of fourteen weeks compared with a modern mill's output of roughly seven hours. The process is thoroughly more cumbersome than conventional methods, with the near constant care the cloth must receive during its creation.

Moxon is unique amongst textile manufacturers for its niche ability to make whichever quantity its approved clients specify, even as little as a suit length. During the XX Century, Moxon's cloth was repeatedly seen clothing the world's best dressed and royalty, but for the purposes of client confidentiality, Moxon has steadfastly refused to name them. Woven samples of their cloth selections are archived within the Moxon Library.