Creating a Victorian Smock

You might have spotted our Estate Manager at the Harvest Weekend wearing traditional agricultural workers clothes. She’ll soon have a new smock to complete the outfit thanks to our talented costume team.

The design is early Victorian although smocks had been worn by agricultural workers for centuries.

Smocks are made from geometrical shapes like rectangles and squares and the smocking gives the garment elasticity (before elastic was invented). They are very eco friendly as there’s no odd shaped scraps left over – fabric was very expensive.

Our smock has been made from linen which is quite heavy weight. Linen was a fabric/fibre produced locally from flax.

It was worn over clothes to protect the clothes underneath while they worked. Typically a second smock was worn as “Sunday best”.

Smocks were often passed down generations – as many as five have been recorded, so they were very sturdily made.

With Victorian industrialisation, smocks became out of fashion and impractical when machinery took over the manual labourers work as they could easily get caught in machinery and cause serious injury.