Evening Talk: From Fields to Factories: The Fascinating History Of The Smock Frock

Meet dress and textile expert Alison Topliss and find out more about Newark’s role as a centre for the manufacture of the smock frock. Alison will bring some real examples of smocks, working men’s garments that reveal so much about daily life in both the countryside and growing towns of the nineteenth century. Abandoned by men at the end of the century, smocks found new life in the wardrobes of women and children, becoming nostalgic symbols of a disappearing rural way of life.