Historic Clothing Day at the Weald & Downland Museum

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 14^th century flint cottage, reconstructed from archaeological evidence, to an early 20^th 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 18^th and early 19^th 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 19^th 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.

The final presentation of the day came from Barbara Painter, who was the clothing consultant for, and heavily

involved in, the Historic Clothing Project at Weald and Downland. We were treated to a catwalk display of some the garments worn by the interpreters. The garments are matched to the buildings in which they are to be worn, so the Tudor period clothing is worn in the Bayleaf Farmstead which is displayed as it would have been around 1540. Similarly the West Wittering School is presented as it would have been around 1890.

A Visit to South Devon

I recently visited south Devon and some museums and costume collections in the area. 

Totnes Fashions and Textiles Museum

Part of the Corsets and Crinolines Exhibition at Totnes

The museum is housed opposite the market square in Totnes. It has the Devonshire Collection of Period Costume. There are three rooms upstairs which have an exhibition that changes every year. The exhibition for 2015 is Corsets and Crinolines; it ends on the 2^nd October. The display shows on one mannequin an outfit, and on the next mannequin what would be worn underneath to produce that shape. The earliest garments in the exhibition are mid 18th century. Unfortunately the museum is not open at weekends; you can tell when the museum is open by the “dancing” puppets in the window, if they are moving the museum is open.

Totnes Elizabethan House & Museum

Although not a costume museum the Elizabethan House, built c.1575, just down the road does have some clothing in its exhibits, including this “window” display shown left of Thomas and Company who were local tailors. The theme garden outside has a bed of plants used as dyes.

Killerton House 

The F word at Killerton

Killerton is an 18^th century house with large gardens that has been owned by the National Trust since the middle of the 20^th century. The fashion collections held there include the Paulise de Bush costume collection. The upstairs has an exhibition of clothing which changes every year, this year’s exhibition 'The F-word: The changing language of fashion' explores how revolutionary innovations in fabric, cut and fastenings have changed the shape of fashion. The items on display run from the 18^th century through to the 1990s. There are some fascinating film clips showing on a loop including a 1940s film showing how zip fasteners were made and a 1920s clip showing how early plastic buttons were made. For more information about the exhibition have a look at the article on the website. The photograph above shows one of the cases.

Clothes for the Bridlington Poor 1637.

Detail of the poor. Tichborne Dole 1671

With many thanks to Paul Leask who passed the information to me. 

The information we have on clothing provided to the poor in the mid seventeenth century has increased considerably over the years. Spufford noted the Beccles overseers’ accounts for 1636-7 and 1645-69.(1) Saunders worked on the churchwarden accounts for several London parishes covering the period 1630-1680,(2) and Tankard used a variety of sources for her work on the clothing of the poor in Sussex. (3) The accounts for Bridlington give us provision in a small Yorkshire town for just one year 1637.(4) 

Bridlington

Bridlington is a small town on the Yorkshire coast. The manor of Bridlington was sold by its owner Sir George Ramsey, to thirteen men from the town who purchased it on behalf of all the tenants. In 1636 these men became the feofees (trustees) of the manor, and the record of the giving of clothing to the poor comes from the following year. (5) In 1643 Henrietta Maria landed there with troops to support her husband.

The costs

The record commences with a statement of the costs involved, or at least some of the costs. The fabrics themselves are given as “Bestowed in cloath for the poor of Bridlington cum Key the summe of £4 15s 6d,” a man called Atken, presumably a tailor, is then paid 6s 0d for “making the poore cloathes.” (4) This relationship between the cost of cloth and the making is similar to that in other places. In Rothfield, Sussex in 1663 four and three quarter ells of lockram plus thread  cost 4s 10d but the cost of making was only 8d, while in 1667 the provision of a coat involved three yards of kersey at 6s, but  only 1s 6d for the making and the buttons. (3)

The quantities

Twenty six gifts were made to twenty five people, eighteen women and six men, plus two gifts of hose to Julian Clarke, whose sex is unclear. Six of the women are described with the prefix Uxor, which means wife, rather than a Christian name. Only two items are for children.

The fabrics

Unfortunately the quote is “Bestowed in cloath.” There is no indication what type or types of cloth, or price per yard, and no indication of the length, so it is uncertain whether it made just these items or if there was fabric left over. Provision for the poor usually involved cheap cloth, the Trustees of an almshouse in Greenwich in 1615 decreed the warden should “make this purchase of cloth in the best season of the yeare when and where he may have yt the best cheape.” (6) However it was not all of the cheapest, fabrics mentioned by those providing poor Londoners with clothes in the 17th century include for wools: broadcloth, cottons, and flannel, and for flax: buckram, canvas, and linen.(2) 

The only material mentioned in the accounts is for William Bower who is given a “dublet and breeches of calves lether with lineinge of hardin” Harden is a coarse flax fabric described by Markham in 1615 as “That which comes from the flaxe being a little towed again in a paire of wool cards, will make a course harding.” (7) Clothing made of leather was relatively common and did not necessarily come from the tailor, a glover’s widow in 1682 had nineteen pairs of leather breeches in stock. (8)

Clothes for men

George Whiteinge described as “a prentice” is given two new shirts. There is no indication as to whether he is a child supported by the parish who is being indentured, or just a very poor apprentice. It was common for parish overseers who were paying for pauper children’s indentures to also provide clothing. In London Saunders noted that the richer parishes provided better clothes. In 1630 St. Botolph Aldgate paid, “for clothing a child put to prentice 15s 4d”, while in 1658/9 the richer St Dunstan in the West paid £1 14s 11d for  “John Dunstan an apprentice.”(2)

Three men, John Ulyet, Edward ffoster, and Richard Sampson are given coats, as is Nan Denie, though her coat is described as fully lined. They are given coats rather than doublets, one man William Bower, mentioned above and described as “the ideote” was given, a “dublet and breeches of calves lether with lineinge of hardin.” The choice of leather may be because it is harder wearing.

Matthew Man is given a safeguard, but whether this is for him or a female member of his family we don’t know.  

Clothes for women

The clothes for women are of two types and here we have terminology questions. Women are given, upper bodies and safeguards. There are six “upper body and sleeves,” while one is just an upper body. There are nine safeguards, including the one for Matthew Man. Fairly obviously these are a main garment for the upper body and a main garment for the lower body, but elsewhere in the country these are usually referred to a waistcoats and petticoats, however sometimes a distinction is made. In 1633 Elizabeth Reynes probate has her owning, among other garments, “a payre of bodice, ... two wastcoates and two old wastcoates more.”(8) Sometimes you get references to petticoats and safeguards, indicating that they are different garments, Buck records Annis Smith in Bedfordshire in 1618, having a wardrobe that consisted of three gowns, five petticoats, three waistcoats, two hats, a safeguard and a cloak, (9) while Tankard quotes a coroner’s inquest, into the suicide of Joan Hawkins in 1606, as noting that her clothing included a petticoat, a russet petticoat and a safeguard. (3) 

The “upper body and sleeves,” is this a boned or an unboned garment? No one can say definitively, but since the payment is just for cloth probably not. When bodies were provided by the Beccles overseers in 1630 they were of canvas.(1) This fits with the London bylaw that for maid servants bodies were to have no stiffening “saving canvas or buckram only.”(10)  Arnold gives a definition of bodies that, “In the second half of the sixteenth century this term refers to both the stiffened inner garment, and the upper part of a woman’s gown fitted close to the body, what we would now describe as a bodice.”(11) Randle Holme describes waistcoats as “an habit or garment generally worn by the middle and lower sort of women, having goared skirts, and some wear them with stomachers.” (12) One wonders if perhaps a waistcoat could be made by a non- professional, a woman at home, while bodies implies that it is made by a tailor, Elizabeth Coulstocke, on trial for theft in 1651 stated that she had intended to make a linsey-woolsey waistcoat from the disputed fabric. (3) Other options are that, for bodies sleeves were an optional extra, hence one woman who received a body without sleeves, or that bodies would be worn with something over them, whereas waistcoats would not.  So although there may be some distinction between the two garments, it is impossible to say what it might be.

The term safeguard, which was common at the time, would also seem to be different in some way from a petticoat. Over the years safeguard has become associated with travelling, however Minsheu in 1617 gives the meaning simply as, “a saveguard for a woman, because it guards the other clothes from soiling.”(13) Phillips dictionary also gives this meaning, “A kind of Dust-gown, or upper Garment worn by Women, commonly called a Safe-Guard”(14) Arnold gives a 1585 description of a safeguard as, “a kind of array or attire reaching from the navel down to the feet,” which implies a skirt.(11)  Holme describes it as part of a riding habit, “put about the middle and so doth secure the feet from cold and dirt.”(12) In the context of Bridlington, it appears to be simply a skirt of some sort.

Clothes for children

Two items are given for children, in both cases apparently to the mother.  One woman, Jane Browne, is given “a paire of breeches for a boy,” presumably her son. The breeches would imply that the child was over the age for breeching, so older than five or six years. Francis Story is given a “childe coate,” children’s coats were probably ankle length with a centre front fastening to the waist. (15) A coat may well indicate that it is for a younger child., but this style survived for many centuries in the uniforms of schools founded in the 16th and 17th centuries such as the various blue coat schools. The coat for poor scholars at Dulwich in 1619 was to be “of good cloth of sad colour, the bodice lined with canvas and the skirts with white cotton. (6)

Bibliography

1. Spufford, M. 1984. The Great Reclothing of Rural England: Petty Chapmen and Their Wares in the Seventeenth Century. London: Hambledon Press

2. Saunders, A. S. 2006. Provision of Apparel for the Poor in London, 1630–1680. Costume, 40, 21-27

3. Tankard, D. 2012. 'A Pair of Grass-Green Woollen Stockings': The Clothing of the Rural Poor in Seventeenth-Century Sussex. Textile History, 43 (1), 5-22.

4. Purvis, J.S. 1926.  Bridlington Charters, Court Rolls and Papers, XVI - XIX Century. Being a selection of Documents Illustrating the History of Bridlington Under the Rule of the Lords Feoffees. London: Brown.

5. Sheahan, J. J. and Whellan, T. 1856. History and Topography of the City of York and the Ainsty Wapentake and the East Riding of Yorkshire, vol 2. Beverley:  Green.

6.  Cunnington, P. and Lucas, C. 1978. Charity costumes of children, scholars, almsfolk, pensioners. London: Black

7. Markham, G. 1615. Countrey Contentments: The Engish Huse-wife. I.B. for R. Jackson,)

8. Williams, L. And Thomson, S. Eds. 2007. Marlborough Probate Inventories 1591-1775. Chippenham: Wiltshire Record Society.

9. Buck, A. 2000. Clothing and textiles in Bedfordshire Inventories 1617-1620. Costume, 34, 25-38

10. Cunnington, P. and Lucas, C. 1967. Occupational costume in England. London: Black

11. Arnold, J. 1988. Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d. Leeds: Maney

12. Holme, R. 1688. Academie of Armourie. s.l.:s.n.

13. Minsheu, J. 1617. The guide into tongues.

14. Phillips, E. And Kersey, J. 1706. New World of Words. London: Phillips

15. Buck, A. 1996. Clothes and the child. Bedford: Ruth Bean

The power of gold – Costume Society Conference 2015

At the beginning of the month I went to London and the Victoria and Albert Museum for the 50^th anniversary conference of the Costume Society. Being the 50^th the theme was gold, and many of the papers returned to the subject of gold jewellery. There were a large number of good papers; those papers mentioned below are just those that covered, in whole or in part, the early modern period. These are my recollections of what was said.

Romy Cockx -Exhibiting the power of gold in Antwerp

This paper was on the new museum soon to be opened in Antwerp amalgamating the collections of the Zilvermuseum and the Diamantmuseum. Antwerp was a centre from trade with the east by 1501. Romy spoke of the early cuts of diamonds, and the move from the table cut of the 16^th century with the rose cut appearing by 1615. The flat rose cut was associated with Antwerp and the full rose cut with Amsterdam. The brilliant cut did not appear until later.

Natasha Awais-Dean – Glittering garments and precious pieces

Men and jewellery in Tudor and Jacobean England was the subject of Natasha’s PhD thesis, and her book on the subject is due to be published by the British Museum Press in 2016. Natasha looked not only at what was worn by the rich, but also at the few items that survive that might have been worn by those lower down the social scale, for example a gilded copper-bronze ring listed on the PAS database. She also looked at the wearing of gold chains as a way of carrying your money around with you. She used as an example gold chains found around the neck of a victim of the Spanish1622 Atocha sinking, the weight of the chains is exactly equivalent to a certain number of Spanish gold coins of the period. The question of the use of gold buttons was also examined, as she pointed out gold buttons in the Earl of Pembroke inventory are listed separately from the clothing, being listed with the jewellery, which may indicate that they could be sewn onto different clothes as required. Finally Natascha talked about hat ornaments, stating that some were made in England and some were cast in one piece, they had four loops at the edge for attaching to the hat. She said that the later aigrette styles go with the fashion for taller hats, I don't think she showed this one, which is in the British Museum.

Geoffrey Munn in conversation with Deirdre Murphy

Geoffrey Munn in conversation with Deirdre Murphy

Geoffrey Munn is the jewellery expert for the television series Antiques Roadshow and he started his conversation with Deirdre with an explanation of the meanings of the jewellery worn by Elizabeth I in the Armada portrait, the version he used was that in the National Portrait Gallery. He focused on the pearls as purity and the bow as virginity. He then went on to cross the centuries looking at later jewellery, and spoke about jewellery he owned which he had brought with him, which we were allowed to look at afterward. 

Maria Hayward – From Whitehall to Wolf Hall: gold in Henry VIII’s wardrobe

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to stay for this paper, so I am hoping that Maria will have it published somewhere.

The future "Patterns of Fashion"

I have my copy of Costume, vol 49, no.2, it arrived in the post this week and there is an article by Jenny Tiramani on the next volumes of Patterns of Fashion that they are planning. 

First, which I was aware of, will be on stays, hoops and rumps 1600-1795. This volume, which will be Pattens of Fashion 5 will include the 1660 silver tissue outfit in the Fashion Museum at Bath. There will be x-rays of the type that Jenny has used in the two volumes of Seventeenth Century Women’s Dress Patterns that have been published by the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Patterns of Fashion 6 will cover men’s and women’s clothes c1620 to 1700, however I get the impression from Jenny’s writing that the bulk of the patterns in no. 6 will be menswear, and will include several from the Livrustkammaren, Stockholm. All those who own or are aware of Lena Rangstrom’s book Modelejon manligt mode : Lions of fashion, male fashion in  the 16^th, 17^th and 18^th centuries, will look forward to having patterns from some of these exquisite items. 

Jenny mentions that there are around 250 patterns taken by Janet Arnold in her archive, which resides with the School of Historical Dress, and states that there are plans for at least a further Patterns of Fashion 7, on women 1700-1820, and Patterns of Fashion 8, on men 1700-1820. There are also patterns for future volumes to cover more recent periods. We all owe Jenny Tiramani, Santina Levey and all those involved in the School of Historical Dress and great debt for carrying on Janet’s work.