Dressing The Virgin Queen

The only known surviving fragment of Elizabeth I’s wardrobe has been hiding in plain sight for 400 years, discovers Catriona Gray

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DEEP in rural Herefordshire lies a small, 13th-century church. Accessed by a quiet road and surrounded by fields, you would never guess that, for hundreds of years, it housed one of the most precious treasures of the Tudor age—an exquisite piece of embroidery, now believed to be the only known surviving fragment of Elizabeth I’s wardrobe.

For generations, the 16th-century fabric had been used as the altar cloth for St Faith’s Bacton. It had originated from Blanche Perry, a local noblewoman who had been a personal attendant and close confidant of Elizabeth I. Although Blanche was buried in Westminster, she had intended Bacton to be her final resting place and commissioned an effigy of herself kneeling beside her queen, which can still be seen today. It clearly shows a connection, via Blanche, between the monarch and this little church.

The parishioners who had carefully preserved their extraordinary altar cloth had long speculated about its origins. It’s easy to see why it was held in such high esteem by its keepers—exquisitely stitched birds, animals, insects and flowers twine their way across a background of precious metal, making it mesmerising to behold.

However, it wasn’t until 2015 that Eleri Lynn, the curator of the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection, happened across a photograph of this curious relic when she was researching Welsh connections to the Tudor Court.