Telling these stories can add to the stories we are already focusing on - they can reveal what has not been looked to yet and can help us to understand better what we already know of the world. Stories hold messages and meaning, something which many people are looking for in their lives in order to find purpose and belonging. And so I offer a story here for you, and plenty more to come, of how meaning has found its way into the very fabric and material of a dirty rag, a moth-eaten scrap, that when unfolded becomes the wardrobe of an ordinary person living an ordinary life centuries into the past.

A Beginning

When I went on a day trip to Oxfordshire researching deliberately concealed garments for my Masters degree, I purposefully went to look at two objects. The first was a pocket, an eighteenth century detachable pocket, kept at a museum resource centre. Pockets at this time were made separately to the gown of a garment and worn tied around the corset hidden beneath layers of skirts or petticoats - a natural concealer of items that became concealed itself. The second was a jacket, made for a young boy in fact and so it was predictably small in stature, ordinary for the time and for the type of family it belonged to. What I saw in these two objects were stories unimaginable of the people who owned these objects and of people who concealed them. The pocket had notes, letters, and coins tucked inside of it already, and yet they all dated from different points in time from the lifespan of the house it was discovered in. It drew me a picture of a person, perhaps a woman, a maid, a young girl even, finding old coinage and notes hidden within the house and using her pocket to keep them hidden. Perhaps though it was even the other way around, pocket first and innumerable treasures later united with another object tied to the history of the house. The silent acts of past inhabitants are unknowable to us now and so there are only stories left to tell of their occurrence.

The young boy brought to the surface something even more powerful. It might not have even been the boy who concealed his jacket. One theory for the concealment of clothes in buildings is the practice of ritual concealment, used as apotropaic devices to protect the inhabitants from spiritual threats beyond their own understanding. It could have been plausible that the boy himself had passed and the remaining family members, whoever they may be, concealed his jacket to spiritually protect the living as well as the dead. A memory of a person, a spirit even, remaining in physical form; a well of grief and familial love in the simple act of concealing a memory away with the house forever.

A Middle

These stories are wrapped up in the hidden cavities of an enduring wall, rebuilt and remade over centuries, wrapped up again by a house, or a home, standing the test of time and the inevitable changes of historical life they survive to witness. Captured within these stories are the boundaries of the physical - the physical body personified by garment or shoe, by extension the building or home, and the physical spaces shaped by individual worlds, bound within a physical object. Dinah Eastop, conservator and a primary scholar in the research of deliberately concealed garments, states that these objects 'draw attention to the unseen, and largely ignored parts of buildings'.1 By revealing these stories, and unwrapping the walls of a building enclosing these garments, brings to the light what was once concealed, and with it the mysteries, the secrets, the purpose behind a folkloric practice unknown to current common knowledge. Thus, hidden within the physical is a world of the spiritual, of the intellectual, and the emotional. Inside of these objects is concealed again, to our limited view, meaning that exists beyond these physical boundaries, perhaps even meaning that roots these objects in time as to endure in its purpose. That is how they arrive to us, persistent and surviving, in hidden forms as was intended. They are carried within these physical boundaries, or what still remains of them, to our present moment with the metaphysical superimposed into its very foundations, into the fabric of a home and its inhabitants.

It becomes clear that there is an integral relationship between the physical spaces of concealment and the object that is ultimately concealed. These are stories not only of a piece of clothing, personal and possessive, hidden away everlasting - the last thing many expect to see when refurbishing their house - but also of a house as domestic setting, protective shelter, and social participant, stories which are central to understanding the people connected to both.

Bringing these stories to the forefront even if they may still be hidden is important to understanding how these objects came to be concealed within the foundations of a house. Edward Hollis, architect and author of The Secret Lives of Buildings and The Memory Palace: A Book of Lost Interiors, accentuates the stories of buildings that have been lost, changed, diminished or even destroyed, and of interiors that reflect the innermost workings of a person's mind.2 These stories are central to understanding the secret, hidden histories of everyday life within these homes, within these clothes, where 'incremental change has been the paradoxical mechanism of their preservation'.3 It is the purpose of this research then to access these stories of change and transformation, still hidden by nature in the absence of historical documentation, as to understand the intentions of this private act of concealment.

Without written evidence, these stories are not singular. They are multiple in their scope and realm of possibilities, complex and unseen, but what can be inferred from the material and reveal about the immaterial is ultimately incredibly valuable. There may be hundreds of stories to consider, or more, all a product of interpretation and the material remnants that we have been left with. We must consider how these objects related to the social and cultural worlds around it - they may be a product of what we may know about a certain period in history, but they are objects of the everyday and their stories lie in their interactions with their physical worlds and the people who used them.4 The repetitive story of a garment worn day to day, for instance, and the many possible stories these garments had the privy to participate in are mostly unreadable from the object alone. However, much can still be read from the material itself; the presence of a stain, a tear, a cut, a fray, and most importantly the many layers of overlapping repairs, can all give information about the worn stories of a garment. With their absence, or even their presence, there are still a multitude of stories that are otherwise unreadable.

...[it is the presupposition that] things perform a central role in the constitution of social and cultural relations. But the extent to which such performances – the very substance of social and cultural life – are recuperable is open to question. As historians, we can only access the means by which things are accommodated into past conceptualisations of social life. The things themselves remain mute.5

So, what particularly makes these unreadable stories valuable? Clothes in shape and construction are a physical echo of the body, its measurements, its dimension, always in moments of movement and transformation. They might hide the exterior and keep it private, but clothes are 'material reminders', creating a new exterior to relay messages and meaning beyond the physical body, as stated in Ann Rosalind Jones' and Peter Stallybrass's introduction on the crucial role clothing played in the making of Renaissance culture.6 They take the interior - the mind, its emotions, a person's identity - and remake it for an outside viewer. In periods of history where clothes were used to denote social status, political allegiance, wealth, class, and gender, physical remnants of these intellectual ideas can reveal much about a person and where they fit into society.

They are memories. Memories of the past, its people, and how they found their way here to the present moment. 'Clothing is a worn world: a world of social relations put upon the wearer's body'.7 From the moment that a garment or a shoe was chosen to be deliberately concealed, hidden away inside the structures of a house, it had already carried with it memories of a lifespan being worn and the symbolic purposes it achieved in doing so. It's purposeful placement, the integral link made between the material and immaterial, encoded with meaning beyond the garment alone create memories entombed within a lasting structure. And these memories lived on, serving us as a reminder of its purpose and its role within a person's life.

An End

What arrives to us are layers of stories, woven into the garments themselves and then into the structure of a house, stitched together memories of people and their identities, their daily lives and perspective of the world around them. Stories of the supernatural and forces beyond the physical garment, connecting together the tangible with the intangible. They are forces of emotion; an energetic fingerprint wrapped in the guise of a physical object. However, it is also important to understand that the readable and unreadable stories hidden amongst these clothes are not static; 'As memories, their meaning is neither given or fixed'.8 Fabric, both lasting and fragile, acted as vessels for the outpouring of emotion, intellectual thought, identity, and the atmospheric energy of past lives in motion. These clothes create the scenes for the stories hidden within its very material.

Thank you for taking the time to read this essay! For a more in-depth reading of this newsletter, you can visit my Glossary where I keep definitions for any unfamiliar terms or phrases to ensure easy reading.

So, what can deliberately concealed garments and shoes specifically tell us as observers of the past? What can we read from clothing that exists solely in the absence of words? It has already been well established within the multi-faceted field of dress history that 'clothing provides a powerful analytical tool' for the study of historical societies and cultures, and for this it is no exception.1 There is much to be gleaned from a deliberately concealed garment; a dirty, worn, piece of fabric, a garment, no matter how ruined from age and debris, while unassuming and dismissible, can reveal much about the internal lives of everyday people, their mentalities towards folklore and supernatural beliefs, their emotional landscape and how they navigated the boundaries between the physical and spiritual. These are emotional objects, fueled by fear, familial love, and memory. Devoted with purpose and supernatural power, these clothes transcend their cultural and social meanings within everyday life in order to embody emotional experiences and identities of the wearer, their family, and subsequent social status. Becoming ingrained within the house and the physical boundaries of a house through concealment, these objects are emblematic of protection; an extension of house, body, and identity that collectively redefine the object by the memories and emotions of a historical inhabitant facing the threat of the expansive, unknown realms of the spirit and supernatural.

There is a widespread collection of deliberately concealed clothing items, especially shoes, that can be found in different collections, people's houses, perhaps hidden away from the public eye. They arrive to us through concealment then discovery and are revitalized again, revealed again with a new life. The survival of clothing pieces can happen in many ways and is something that is rare for garments preceding the 18th century, especially ones that belong to the lower and middling orders of society. In a sense these concealed clothes, surviving despite their intimacy with dirt, dust, and debris, are significant because of their rarity and can tell us much on an initial basis of the clothing customs of everyday people. Through the cut, construction, materials, and style, there is much to learn and study about the clothes of ordinary people. However, in their found state, concealed garments can reveal much more about the people who wore them and concealed them. The mentality of the person concealing an object is one thing - their beliefs of magic and folklore - but there is also their behaviour as an act, a ritual, practicing these beliefs. The emotions of the concealer too is bound up in this physical act of protection - to keep a piece of clothing, whether it is concealed or not, illustrates the meanings that can be imbued within our clothes, their memories, immortalised through shape, identity, and purpose.2 It raises the question of what purpose or meaning is behind concealment. What sentiment or emotional experience drives such a choice?

By studying the widespread collection of garments that have been deliberately concealed, we can start to paint a picture of the different ways in which clothing has been used to symbolically relay meaning, emotion, and memory. We can better understand the experiences of the people behind concealed objects and how they used their beliefs and place within society to express themselves through clothes. These identities are positioned within objects that obstruct the concealer from the spiritual world - a barrier, if you will, to keep them safe from unseen threats. Hamling and Richardson's collection of essays introduces the topic of religious identities embodied through objects and religious practices, stating that 'the dichotomy between the body and the spirit, the earthly and the heavenly, and the material and the immaterial was after all frequently stressed'.3 The relationship between the physical and spiritual has been central to many ideas expressed throughout history. Material culture and objects are incredibly significant to the exploration of beliefs in magic and the supernatural as they reveal how people used objects to navigate their physical experience with the spiritual world. Clothing therefore embodies the interaction of this relationship; the material united with the immaterial.

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I have mentioned much about what these objects can reveal about historical practices and the social lives of people in the past. There is indeed many disciplines that study deliberately concealed garments and other objects as evidence of a variety of things; ritual behaviours, folklore and popular religion, beliefs in magic and the supernatural, the everyday lives and identities of ordinary people, the dress of the middling and lower orders in society, and the list goes on. The focus of my research in particular is emotion, memory, and identities. What emotions are charged within a piece of clothing that is utilised as an apotropaic device? What is the emotional experience of the concealer and how are these emotions felt? And of course, the emotional experience of a person through their interaction with an object can tell us much about the memories and identities of the people who lived in these spaces, who wore these garments, who concealed them and acted on their beliefs. What becomes clear from this line of research is that there is much to understand from how a person in the past defined their relationship between the physical world and the world of the spiritual. There is much more to say on the topic of my approach in this research, but for now I will keep it brief.

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Resources and Links

For now, this is a free version of the Resources and Links page, which everyone will be able to see, whether you have a free subscription or none at all. When paid subscriptions are introduced in the future, this list will continue to expand with every post I make, with every reference, and with every new source I come across. My research into this topic is ever expanding, and so this page will be a tracker of sorts of where my research has gone. This list will also hold all my recommendations for new reads, new podcasts, new videos, new anything that I come across in my search across the internet.

The page is divided into different sections: My Stuff, Websites, Books, Articles and Journals, Archives and Collections, Advice for Care of Deliberately Concealed Objects, and Elsewhere on the Internet. And subjects covered include dress history, the archaeology of ritual and magic, textile conservation, the history of emotions, and material studies. Research into deliberately concealed objects, concealment practices, and counter-witchcraft is currently multi-disciplinary, so there is much to discover from these different approaches to material culture.

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Here are some of my favourites:

1. Early Modern Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture and its Meanings by Tara Hamling and Catherine Richardson.

This is a personal favourite of mine. The focus of these essays are everyday objects; objects that can reveal the identities, beliefs, practices, and emotional landscapes of ordinary people. As these are artifacts found in homes, in intimate personal spaces, they can reveal the intimate stories of the people in the past. This book in particular is material culture focused and so the objects, their function, design, production, and use are at the forefront of the essays inside. Particularly when it comes to items of dress, there are hats, gloves, and shoes, fabric and the weaver's tools, and much more. There is even a table of contents listed and grouped by order of object, as it is the tales told by the objects left behind that is important for accessing the historical worlds that came before us.

2. Physical Evidence for Ritual Acts, Sorcery and Witchcraft in Christian Britain: A Feeling for Magic by Ronal Hutton.

If there was a textbook addressing concealment practices and apotropaic devices used in houses, then this is the book. With plenty of articles from different scholars researching everything from apotropaic symbols or witch marks, witch bottles, the burial or concealment of animal bones, spiritual middens, deliberately concealed garments and shoes, its reaches throughout history and across continents, this book was a treasure trove of a find. If your want to learn more, then this is definitely the place to go.

3. 'Ritual, Recycling and Recontextualization: Putting the Concealed Shoe into Context' in Cambridge Archaeological Journal by Ceri Houlbrook.

This is truly the first anything that I read about deliberately concealed garments. During my Masters degree in Glasgow, I took a class called Material Culture: a module led by the Textile Conservation MPhil at the Kelvin Centre. In one of these classes, deliberately concealed garments was used as an example of the different methods used for restoration - whether an object is restored to its former state or if it is treated enough for it to remain as it has come to any museum or resource centre. In this example, a child's jacket from the seventeenth century had been left in the same state it had been found to preserve its history as a deliberately concealed garment, but a replica had been constructed in order to show the public what the original garment would have looked like. On choosing the topic of my final essay, I couldn't stop thinking about these garments! I was fully entranced and with some quick research, I found this article and became absolutely enamoured with the subject as a whole. Things quickly escalated and I found myself obsessed and writing about it for my dissertation! And this article has it all - it addresses a handful of case studies of deliberately concealed shoes; the symbolic and folkloric relevance of shoes in historical perspectives; the secrecy of concealment practices; and the condition of the shoes themselves.

Coming up will also be an introduction to the finished Glossary page, so expect that in your inbox next week!

Let us consider the emotional depths of an object and its history. That feeling of pleasure and novelty at discovering an abundance of objects, whether it is clothes and accessories, jewellery, ceramics, paintings and art, glassware, whatever it may be, can sometimes be a shallow feeling when deeper meaning, functionality, or cultural relevance is not considered. There may be a multitude of emotions unearthed with the discovery, or rediscovery, of an object. An heirloom, for example, can offer a sense of lineage and family to the receiver alongside emotions of love, grief, and sadness. If you were to go up into your attic at this moment, whether it is in your own house or your parent's house, to search around the boxes, what would you find? Nostalgia of days gone past? Souvenirs from one of your many adventures? Memories of love especially may be represented by a wedding dress, baby clothes or christening robes. Perhaps you found a box full of clothes your grandmother used to own and wear when she was a teenager. Garments and textiles can represent generations of people, traditions, and a sense of growth - from tablecloths, curtains, baby blankets, and embroidered cushions to upcycled dresses, hats, gloves, and valuable jewellery. There is a deep understanding of connection, love and family when we consider the history of these kinds of objects. They are personal, and they permeate through layers of history, generations of memories, milestones, and changing minds.

And they begin in the home. Whether it be the family home passed down through generations, or one you have made for yourself, this sense of family and history can pass from house to house through the connection of people and their possessions. A home is a precious space for both our own physical security and our spiritual one; to know that you may return to where your heart and mind lies, where your loved ones reside, where you may seek safety and respite from the external world is a reassuring and settling feeling. Homes and houses ground us physically within our external and internal social spaces and act as boundaries to the emotional - they are armed with a hoard of personal possessions, trophies, souvenirs, and decorations that reflect ourselves and our personal journeys through life. They are treasure troves for the keen exploration of an outside observer, but they are also a necessary comfort, a practicality, an emotional landscape, a painter's canvas for the resident to pick and choose as they wish. And objects, large and small, may be their paint or medium of choice. We are not always given intimate access to the homes of others and the objects that may lie within. Such would be an invasion. But these possessions are what remain behind when we pass on and so they can be seen or discovered in our homes or houses whose past residents have chosen to leave a piece of themselves behind for discovery.

These traces of the past can remain hidden and secret for years to come, until they are rediscovered and seen again by new eyes. They can manifest as old floral wallpapers, used in the original construction of the house, trapped underneath layers of paint and (you guessed it) more wallpaper. Original tiling or wooden floors may be concealed beneath carpets, vinyl or linoleum. A photograph or newspaper clipping may be found tucked snugly behind a fireplace; a message written on the plaster before the paper was applied; seemingly random objects and tools left at the bottom of a cupboard or the back of a drawer; and old discarded items left in boxes in the attic from previous owners who have sold the house and moved on. Many of these items may not be considered as deliberately concealed objects, but they are still remnants of people and the past who have used a common space functionally to live as emotional physical beings. We can understand the need to leave our mark, to say goodbye to a part of our past spent in homes full of memories and our own personal journeys. And even when there is no intention to leave something behind, we may still manage it from our being there.

This has been far from a definition of deliberately concealed garments, rather instead an introduction to the complex relationships that occur between the intimate spaces of our homes, our emotional experiences full of memory and physical feeling, and the objects which we possess. Not only that, but also the role that discovery plays in finding deliberately concealed objects. Many of these unseen aspects of our homes are only discovered through renovation and building works - knocking down walls, ripping down wallpaper, and unearthing floors. What has been deliberately concealed is very much made and found in the same way. Shoes have been commonly found and placed behind fireplaces when new ones are built or knocked down. There may be a cavity in the wall or a space between floors of a house made for the storage of items, which are later revealed when new construction begins. The act of building and rebuilding done centuries apart can often reveal more than what was expected. And what is found can often be dirty and torn beyond repair; just a part of the dust and debris made in the foundations of a house.

At the centre of this is the intention to conceal deliberately, with purpose, which at presently is only discernible through the objects themselves, the methods of concealment, and folkloric traditions. With the absence of any written documentation explaining or describing concealment practices for clothes and other items, it comes down to understanding the unseen and their place in historical buildings as hidden objects. Thankfully, clothes and shoes are made up of fabrics and stitches, colours and patterns, all cut and made for the wearer. Despite the lack of words, they may be read and their components interpreted.

Deliberately concealed objects for a long time have been considered as objects of magic that act as apotropaic devices for the protection of a house and its inhabitants. Whilst clothing and shoes can certainly be read in much the same way, there have been instances of deliberately concealed garments with either ambiguous circumstances (and so possibly concealed for other purposes) or have been concealed for storage or waste disposal. This is a subject which I will undoubtedly broaden on in the upcoming weeks, but for now, you may see that there are plenty of educational posts out there on Instagram and other platforms covering apotropaic markings, mummified cats, and protection against witchcraft as Halloween approaches. I will be sharing some on my Instagram stories if you are interested in reading more.

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This is a brand new adventure for my writing, a new chapter if you will, where my research will not just lie hidden only for my eyes to look at waiting for the day it will be pushed together as one whole book or piece of work that is then presented for everyone to see in its completion. This is a journal, a notebook that I have left on my desk for everyone else to peruse as I continue researching and writing in my own time, sharing my ideas and hopefully for everyone else to share theirs.

Hidden Within These Walls is a newsletter updating you on my journey of research into a lesser known part of history: deliberately concealed garments. As a writer, my research has naturally taken the shape of telling others of people's stories; their emotional lives informed by social and cultural perspectives, embodied now through physical practices that live on through clothing; pieces that have stories of their own to tell from production, to wear, to concealment and even in discovery and conservation. These are stories passed down from the crafting of hands: hands that have spun yarn and woven fabrics, that measured and cut, sewed together and started the process again. These are hands that have touched and adjusted and kept clothing close to the body, have repaired and remade, and then folded away - hidden like a secret - behind a newly built fireplace, under a floorboard, or within a cavity of a wall. And then hands have found them again, brought them back into the daylight for new eyes and hands to see and touch and smell; to listen to and the stories that can be interpreted through their materiality.

What are Deliberately Concealed Garments?

These are pieces of clothing – anything from a hat to a shoe, a bodice to a pocket – that have been found deliberately concealed within the walls, floors, or fireplaces of a historical building. The practice of concealing objects in the foundations and walls of houses has been around for a long time, and so with every object that has been discovered, there comes along with it a rich emotional history of the possession and its possessor, the house they both inhabited, and the greater world of spirits and demons beyond that threatened both life and harmony. Not only have deliberately concealed garments been used as an example of folklore and ritual, but also of supernatural beliefs, magic, and the boundaries of belief in popular religion. But these garments can also be used as evidence for emotional lives, ones that concealed these objects for safekeeping and in memoriam, that interacted with the body physically and spiritually, within this life and the next. There is a wealth of knowledge and understanding to be uncovered just from the fold of a fabric and a well-intentioned stitch; knowledge that abounds between realms of the body and the spirit. And there are people too, their stories and emotional experiences of the world both in life and in death...read more here.

For those of you wanting to know more...don't worry, this is the whole point! Each week, I will be uploading a post that will be sent to your inbox with a little more information than the week before of this unique subject.

Before too long, I will have posted all the free content that is available for everyone to read and peruse in their own time on my Substack. This will eventually, however, turn into a paid subscription if you want to keep reading full updates every week as you follow along with travel logs as I visit these objects, and more in-depth literature reviews, essays, and much, much more.

Navigating Hidden Within These Walls on Substack

Once you have subscribed to my Substack, you will start receiving updates in your inbox for every new post that I write, but there is also much more to find on my Substack! First, if you want more information about the person behind the pen - that's me! - or about this newsletter, then head over to the About page.

But there is also much more! The Glossary page has a whole index of words and phrases with their definitions to aid in easy reading. And there is also a page for Resources and Links full of websites, book recommendations, articles, journals and more. Coming in the future will be podcast episodes accompanying posts, Q&As, travel logs and museum visits, and an open chat for subscribers to discuss and ask questions.

For now, thank you all for reading and I hope you stay along for the journey!

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