‘A Pair of Grass-Green Woollen Stockings’: The Clothing of the Rural Poor in Seventeenth-Century Sussex

Abstract

This article examines the clothing of the rural poor in seventeenth-century Sussex, considering what men and women wore, what their clothing was made of and where they got it from, drawing on a broad range of documentary sources including legal depositions, probate material and overseers’ accounts. As would be expected, the clothing of this social group was primarily functional, reflecting limited budgets and arduous working lives. But we can see in the choice of fabric colour, trimmings and accessories that men and women were concerned about their appearance and could achieve a measure of social display, at least in their ‘holiday’ clothes. The ways in which the poor acquired their clothes were complex, involving them in overlapping spheres of production and distribution, which included home production and shop-bought ready-to-wear, all accommodated within a range of economic survival strategies.

I would like to thank Lesley Parker and Barbara Painter for their advice and comments on this article whilst it was in draft.

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Danae Tankard

Danae Tankard combines her role as a social historian at the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum with a part-time position as a senior lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Chichester. Her current research focuses on the social, domestic and economic lives of the rural poor in seventeenth-century Sussex.