Online Exhibition: Menswear
Costume provides a tangible link to the past. Through costume, we can see the intricacies of a persons life and how they lived.
The wear, repair and adaptation of clothing create a vivid image of the individual and how they presented themselves to the world.
Over the summer, volunteer Emily has been working at the silk museum to explore and document the menswear collection. The placement has been supported by the generosity of The Costume Society and their Museum Work Experience Grant. In this exhibition, we will be exploring some of the lives revealed through costumes in the collection. From figures of authority to entertainers, the collection reveals a diverse range of stories.
The menswear collection at Macclesfield Silk Museum spans from the 18th century to the 21st century revealing a huge range of ways in which men dressed and expressed their identities over time. The exhibition showcases four outfits belonging to men connected to Macclesfield. Through their clothing we will be sharing the stories of factory owner John Henry Neave; policeman Henry Sheasby; Sir Philip Lancaster Brocklehurst, and entertainer Arthur Hackney.
John Henry Neave
John Henry Neave was a prominent member of his community. An influential quaker and mill owner, Neave resided in Rainow with his hat factory in Bollington, on the outskirts of Macclesfield. He came from a wealthy family, his cousin was confectioner Joseph Rowntree, with whom he shared an interest in education. John ran Quaker meetings with wife Annie, holding children’s meetings every fortnight.
John exported felt to hat makers worldwide. The museum’s collection has photographs of Neave’s hat factory showing the machines used in the production of hats and felt, and the collection also contains a selection of hat crowns produced in Neave’s factory, showing the huge variety of colours in which the felt was produced.
Despite his profession, John did not make the hat seen in the photograph, his hat was made by Frank van Kleeck of Poughkeepsie, New York. John is recorded as visiting New York many times in the late 19th and early 20th century, where he may have purchased this hat. It was on returning from one of these trips, in August 1917, while sailing home on the SS Arabic, a German U-Boat sank the Vessel, killing 44 passengers and crew. John Henry survived this tragedy but Annie did not. Manchester Art Gallery’s collection holds Annie’s dress, bonnet and shawl.
Sir Philip Lancaster Brocklehurst
Father of arctic explorer, Philip Lee Brocklehurst, and brother of West Park visionary, Marianne Brocklehurst, Philip Lancaster Brocklehurst was an interesting character in his own right. He held the titles of Deputy Lieutenant of Staffordshire and Justice of the Peace for the county of Cheshire. He was given the title of 1st Baronet Brocklehurst, of Swythamley Park in Edward VII’s Birthday Honours in June 1903, he died in May 1904 and the title was passed to his son.
The outfit we have in the collections is Philip Brocklehurst’s Deputy Lieutenant uniform. The title of Deputy Lieutenant of Staffordshire was a largely ceremonial one, assisting and standing in for the Lieutenant of the county in official events. Nevertheless, the detail and quality of the uniform is outstanding. One thing I noticed was the similarity to Henry Sheasby’s uniform. Both have a metallic ribbon down the side of the trousers that match the motif on their bicorn hats. The Deputy Lieutenant's uniform uses an acorn and oak leaf motif in these areas, whilst the Chief Inspectors’ uniform uses just leaves in its pattern, Perhaps symbolising the ranking of these positions.
Henry Sheasby
Chief Inspector Henry Sheasby followed in his father’s footsteps when he took the role in 1907 and remained there until 1942. Between them, they served this role for 64 years. The objects in the collection, donated by the family, show the pride that Mr Sheasby had in his job, he kept letters and medals, donated alongside his uniform, showing his achievement and recognition throughout his career, including the King George V Silver Jubilee medal.
When discovering Henry’s uniform, I was struck by the similarity between one of his hats, and a portrait of a police officer by Charles Tunnicliffe that hangs on the landing of the Silk Museum. Painted in 1935, the officer in the portrait would have served under Chief Inspector Henry Sheasby and the hat and uniform of Sheasby also help bring to life the man in the portrait.
Arthur Hackney
Arthur Hackney’s Pierrot costume is my favourite find from the project. The collection holds two of these outfits, the other belonged to Harold Swindells. The outfits were worn in the 1930s as part of the Macclesfield Sunday school Pierrot Troupe. Other members of the Troupe were Arthur’s wife Laura Hackney, Alice Davenport and Doris Swindells. One of the women in the troupe is unidentified.
Pierrot troupes and concert parties were popular forms of entertainment from the late 19th century to the middle of the 20th century. These groups had particular importance during the First World War, where soldiers would form Pierrot troupes providing much-needed relief from the horrors of war. They remained popular until the 1950s.
Outside of the Pierrot troupe, Arthur Hackney was also involved in the Sunday school concert band and football team. Professionally, Arthur worked as a cabinet maker but as the costume shows, the lives of working individuals in Macclesfield were as interesting and varied as those such as Sir Philip Lancaster Brocklehurst.
Working Class representation
What is lacking in the collection is the representation of working people. There are fragments of the lives of Macclesfield workers in the menswear collection, a pair of shoes or a special piece of clothing (as seen with Arthur Hackney’s Pierrot costume). But we cannot piece these things together to explore an individual's everyday life in the same way as John Henry Neave for example.
Historically, working-class clothing has not been collected or valued in the same way as the clothes of the upper classes. This is compounded by how costume collections have also favoured womenswear. This lack of representation in the collection is ultimately reflected in what objects and outfits are displayed in a museum, with the wealthier members of society physically represented by their clothes while the people who worked for them remain ghosts in stories and photographs. By showing how costumes can reveal the lives of those who wore them, as well as appreciating the aesthetic value of these items of clothing, we are showing that valuing the clothes of working people enriches our image and understanding of the past.
Although a complete outfit is currently lacking in the collection, there are a few pairs of shoes belonging to everyday people working in Macclesfield. One particular pair belonged to J M Parfitt who wore these shoes to work in the 1930s and 40s, in G H Heath’s mill on Pickford Street and in Brunswick Street Mill, then owned by Robert McCoy & Sons. On the sole of a different pair, we can see a rainbow of threads picked up when working on the factory floor. These bright fibres and the delicate fabrics they were transformed into, juxtapose the heavy boots and hard manual work required of workers, such as Mr Parfitt. Despite only having one pair of his shoes, studying the repaired and worn clogs as part of the wider collection allows us to discover the story of what life was like for the man who owned them.
The audit and research of the menswear collection were made possible by the generosity of the Costume Society. Their Museum Work Experience Grant funded the placement to complete this project over the summer, which has culminated in this online exhibition and the display of Arthur Hackney’s Pierrot costume which you can see in the Red Room of the Silk Museum. Thank you also to Brocklehurst Archive and Swythamley Historical Society for giving their permission to use the photograph of Philip Lancaster Brocklehurst, and to Rainow History Group for their permission to include the Neave family photograph.
