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| The gridshell building at Weald & Downland |
On Sunday I
attended the Weald and Downland Museum’s Historic Clothing Day held in the
site’s incredible Gridshell building, see right. For those who do not know
the Weald
and Downland Museum,
it is an open air museum with more than 40 buildings that were in danger of
destruction, and which have been rebuilt on a 40 acre site. The buildings run
from a 14th century flint cottage, reconstructed from archaeological
evidence, to an early 20th century “tin” church. In many of these
buildings the museum has costumed interpreters and volunteers, and the project
that clothed these people was the subject of the last presentation of the day.
The day
started with a presentation on Henry VIII’s clothing from Maria Hayward author
of, among other works, Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII (2007), Rich
Apparel: Clothing and the Law in Henry VIII's England (2009), and The 1547
Inventory of King Henry VIII: Volume 2: Textiles and Dress (2012). I am still
coming to terms with the proposition that it is possible, to an extent, to “let
out” a suit of armour when your waist grows. Although this was done for some of
Henry’s armour he had many sets and they show his increase in size from a 34
inch waist as a young man to a 51 inch waist in this last years. Maria showed
items other than armour associated with Henry including a hawking glove now in the Ashmolean, and clothes similar to those he
would have worn, such as the splendid outfit that belonged to Maurice of Saxony. She noted that by the end of his
reign he owned many pairs of glasses.
The second
presentation was from Danae Tankard on Fashionable clothing in late seventeenth
century Sussex. Danae looked at the clothing choices and purchases of several
middling people in Sussex including Samuel Jeake and his wife of Rye. Jeake was a merchant and a dissenter
and his correspondence from London to his wife in the provinces, includes
fashion comments, for example on a mantua that was to be drawn with India
sprigs, presumably indicating that it was to have a pattern drawn on it for her
to embroider. Another person was Edward May (1663-86), his father dying when he
was young, the payments for his clothes were made by a trustee Walter Roberts,
and there are letters between Roberts and a tailor John Heath.
After a break
Grace Evans, curator of the Chertsey Museum, gave a presentation on 18th
and early 19th century items from the Olive
Matthews bequest that
are now in the museum. Grace discussed how Olive Matthews started as a
collector of historical dress as young as aged twelve, using her allowance to
purchase from the Caledonian Road Market before the Second World War. Grace
showed some of the highlights of the collection including an embroidered man’s night cap of c1600-20, and a 1690s collar of point de neige lace. There was also an open robe of
1734-4 silk that had been remake sometime in the 1750s with the addition of two
other silks. Frugal indeed.
There was
long break for lunch where we could go around the buildings and see some of the
demonstrations as in the photograph to the left where the process of creating
linen from flax was being presented by a costumed interpreter.
After lunch
Vivienne Richmond author of Clothing the poor in 19th
century England,
spoke on the subject. She talked about the problems of assessing evidence, she
regards the painting that is used for the cover of her book as a romanticised
image, and queried to what extent
photographs of the ragged children
of the time might have been sent up by the photographer. She spoke of the
concept of Sunday best (something I remember from my own childhood), and quoted
from someone reminiscing that, because they did not have Sunday best clothing,
their pious mother had taken them to a church some distance from where they
lived so they would not be seen attending church in ragged clothes.
