Fox Brothers

Fox Brothers & Co is a clothmaker based in Wellington, Somerset, England. The company is one of the few working cloth mills still producing cloth entirely in England.

Fox Brothers was one of the earliest entrants into the wool industry in the UK, having its roots as a cottage industry in 1745. The company was officially founded by Thomas Fox in Wellington 1772. Thomas and his wife Sarah Smith, built in 1801, then lived in, Tone Dale House, Wellington - the house is still lived in by a Fox, five generations later. During the Industrial Revolution the company brought wool sorting, spinning, drying and weaving under one roof. It once owned nine mills, including Tonedale Mills, and employed nearly 5,000 workers. During the First World War it won a War Office contract to provide 852 miles (1,371 km) of khaki coloured cloth for military puttees.

Fox Brothers makes wool, worsted, cashmere and was the original creator of flannel for use in suitmaking and held the Trademark for 'Flannel' up to the 1950s. The company uses looms which are 50 years old and maintains a pattern archive dating back to its foundation, said to be 'one of the most significant textile (company) archives in the British Isles'. Fox Brothers has made cloth for the suits of several famous people including flannel for Bob Hope, chalkstripe for Winston Churchill and PoW check for the Duke of Windsor. Hollywood legend Cary Grant was often photographed wearing Fox Flannel, at a time when leading men were expected to provide their own wardrobe for the films in which they starred.