The Deliberately Concealed Garments Project (DCGP)

This project was set up at The Textile Conservation Centre (TCC), Winchester Campus, University of Southampton with the aim of locating, documenting and researching garments and associated objects found concealed in buildings.

The project has built on pioneering work undertaken at Northampton Museums and Gardens, where an index records thousands of boots and shoes found concealed within buildings. The DCGP encourages the recording and preservation of garment and other finds by raising awareness of concealment practices and providing conservation advice. ‘Report a find’ forms are available from the website; finds can also be reported online.

The project website www.concealedgarments.org presents an online database of garment and associated finds, a guided tour of garment caches from across the UK, interviews from the oral history programme, case studies and much more. If you know of any finds, or if you have hidden something, please contact us at the project website.

Discoveries:                        Over 30 previously unreported caches have been recorded.  One of the special features of the caches is that they often preserve items of working dress, which are otherwise rarely preserved.  One example is a printed cloth pocket, of the sort that ‘Lucy Lockett’ lost. A tie-on pocket, found in a house in Abingdon, is of a once common sort, which is now very rare.  What makes this pocket extra special is that it was hidden with the following contents: a child’s linen cap, coins and trade tokens, letters and receipts.

Garment finds have also provided material for important scientific research.  The fragmentary condition of some finds can make sampling possible.  For example, a sample of baleen (‘whalebone’) was removed from a damaged stomacher, a corset-like garment. The stomacher was found hidden alongside a brick chimney flue which had been added to a timber-framed house in Nether Wallop. DNA analysis of the baleen showed that it came from a previously unrecorded mitochondrial lineage of Eubalaena glacialis, the North Atlantic right whale, which is classed as critically endangered as a result of whaling. The stomacher has provided previously unrecorded evidence for the decline in its genetic diversity.  So a shabby, damaged garment, that could so easily have been overlooked and thrown away as rubbish, had it not been for the vigilance of the house owner who discovered the cache during building work, has helped to inform understanding of biodiversity, and may, in time, inform nature conservation policies.  

Examining the Stomacher

For more information about this project and the website please contact:

Dinah Eastop, MA FIIC ACR FHEA

Senior Lecturer, and Associate Director of the AHRC Research Centre for Textile Conservationand Textile Studies, 2002 - 07

dde@soton.ac.uk

TCC Reception: +00 (44) 023 8059 7100