Newsweek has an article about research into the sources of textiles which survive at Hardwick Hall from the time of its builder, the formidable Elizabeth Dowager Countess of Shrewsbury. The textiles used appear to have originated in ecclesiastical vestments released on to the market by the dissolution of the monasteries, the suppression of the chantries and the 1552 confiscation from parish sacristies.
Studies such as The Voices of Morebath have shown how much effort was still being put into acquiring new vestments for churches in the years just before and during this appalling pillage. There is evidence of churches and local authorities as well as devout laypeople buying vestments from monastic dissolution sales to re-use them and later of vestments adapted as altar coverings and funeral palls.
I see the research project is led by my old friend from Oxford Professor James Clark, who has written in recent years a major study of the dissolution of the monasteries.
The article is unfortunately an example of not very well written journalese pitched at those who know nothing about the past, as well as homing in onto a currently topical theme, but once one makes allowances for all that, it is of interest and it can be seen at Historians find evidence of recycling in Tudor times
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