Clothing

Just as wool formed the cornerstone of the early English economy, so was it the foundation of everyone’s wardrobe, high-born or low. The vast majority of clothing was fashioned of this extraordinarily useful renewable resource shorn from sheep. Of secondary importance was the relative luxuriousness of linen, used for under clothing. Silk, exceedingly rare and costly, was limited to the very rich, and to the burials of the sainted.

Manuscript painting offers the greatest number of illustrations of Anglo-Saxon garments, with the kings, queens, saints and clerics depicted in raiment appropriate to their respective classes. Be mindful that our surmises are thus weighted towards the luxurious tastes of the wealthy. Ivory, wood, and bone carvings, stone crosses and wall paintings provide another glimpse into prevailing fashion. Lords and ladies, thegns and merchants describe and name particular articles of clothing in their wills, and leave them to favoured heirs. Grave finds and occasional cess-pit remnants of clothing provide additional, more egalitarian sources for study.

Unmentionables

Throughout the Anglo-Saxon period (450-1100) women wore a fairly slender undergarment, or shift, with long, narrow sleeves. In coloured illustrations this is generally white, indicating linen, although poorer woman may have had little choice but to wear wool next to the skin. It is not known how long the shift was, and it most probably varied in length. Linen shifts were valuable enough to be mentioned by several testatrix in their wills. No underpants were worn. (Of all the garments considered essential today, these were the most recently adopted, coming into general use only in the late eighteenth century. The sanitary napkins used by our Anglo-Saxon fore-mothers were most likely sewn linen pads stuffed with wool fleece, or perhaps layer upon layer of linen sewn together. These would have been set inside a close-fitting pair of drawers worn expressly for this purpose. Recall that commercially made disposable napkins only date to the third decade of the twentieth century, although commercially made reusable napkins were available decades earlier.)

Stockings, either woven and then cut and sewn to fit, or fashioned by the technique known today as nålbinding , were held up by knee garters fashioned of wool strips.

Mentionables

Over the shift came the long woolen gown. This dress would of course vary with the wealth of the wearer. The pronounced predilection of the Anglo-Saxons for vivid colour suggests that the dyer’s art was amply employed in producing tints of blue (from leaves of the herb woad), yellow (from the weld plant), green (from club moss and greenweed), and violet (from lichen). In the 5th and 6th centuries, Anglo-Saxon women wore gowns that were simple tubes of fabric, fastened together at the shoulders by paired brooches - a style that was to persist into the 11th century with Danish women. A fabric sash or girdle was often wrapped around the waist, and was used to suspend household keys, small toilet implements such as nail scissors, ear scoops, and tweezers, and beautiful and mysterious objects such as small crystal balls and decorative spoon-like sieves, like those found in the female grave at Chessell Down, Isle of Wight. Anglian women’s graves have contained clasps of various metals at the wrist bones, apparently used to secure the sleeves.

Paris has ever dictated fashion to the rest of the West, and it was no different for our fore-mothers. Beginning in the late 7th century Frankish fashion had a strong influence on Anglo-Saxon women's clothing. The new gown style was ankle-length, with wide sleeves to the elbow, and was slipped on over the head. The girdle became less prominent with fewer, and more decorative, accessories hanging from it. Wide bands of contrasting colour adorn these gowns, edging the sleeves and hem and collar line, and sometimes running down the front. These may have been woven bands of wool sewn on, or broad areas of dense embroidery.