Exeter researcher discover the Tudors were avid recyclers

Research carried out by the University of Exeter and the National Trust has revealed that the Tudours were keen recyclers!

Rich fabrics and fine embroidery seized from hundreds of churches closed by Henry VIII during the English Reformation were saved and repurposed through a remarkable recycling network that reached across all strata of 16th century society.

New research has uncovered how medieval church vestments, including some of the most luxurious Italian-imported fabrics, made their way into the homes and living spaces of Tudor society via a network which included government officials, merchants, craftspeople and extended families.

Officers from the Court of Augmentations, set up to manage the process of dissolving the monasteries and chantry chapels and to ensure that the Crown took most of their treasures, even kept a look-out for fine fabrics which they might like to keep for themselves.

These are the preliminary findings of a project called Textile Transmissions, which is being conducted by the National Trust and the University of Exeter and centres upon a collection of fabrics held at Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, belonging to Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury (1527–1608).

Best known as “Bess of Hardwick”, the Countess was renowned for her interior decoration of her mansion houses Chatsworth and Hardwick, where she invested lavishly in carpets, tapestries and embroideries.

Her schemes have always been seen as the conspicuous consumption of the very latest fashions in art and design with the aim of positioning herself at the apex of Tudor society. But, the researchers say, the reality is more nuanced, and that these remarkable interiors were an expression of Bess’s own creative ingenuity, making modish new decorations from second-hand materials, continuing a tradition of recycling and upcycling which was age-old.

“On first encounter, the embroidered textiles that survive today at Hardwick appear to carry the hallmarks of artwork from the end of the Tudor era, their subjects taken from Roman and Old Testament history, and their style copying the classicism of the European Renaissance,” said Emma Slocombe, Senior National Curator at the National Trust.

“Yet seen in close-up, the appliqué hangings reveal a remarkable secret: each one is made from fabric and figures cut from textiles originally made for a quite different purpose. In fact, Bess’s textiles began life decades before she embarked on the decoration of her great houses as clergy vestments and altar cloths used in churches of all kinds before the Tudor Reformation. Bess’s bespoke decorations for her new homes were in fact old textiles recovered and recycled.”

Professor James Clark, the lead researcher on the project, from Exeter’s Department of Archaeology and History.

He added: “What can be seen so vividly at Hardwick, was part of an impulse to recover, conserve and recycle that was shared in Tudor households countrywide. Across the country, there was an excited scramble for bargains and cultural souvenirs put up for sale as part of the dismantling, dispersal and destruction of the interior decorations of hundreds of churches.

"Textiles were among the most popular and sought-after of all of these treasures, in part because of the quality of England’s church vestments – a combination of rare Italian fabrics and insular embroidery skill – but also because such fine, well-crafted pieces clearly had so many years’ use left in them.”

The project, launched in 2021 with seed funding from the National Trust, has involved Ms Slocombe and Professor Clark conducting extensive research in the archives of public and private collections, as well as in household accounts and old auction sale catalogues.