Garment terminology is complex, many dress items sharing similar features and their boundaries often being indistinct. Shawls sometimes resemble cloaks (see DYA Periodical, October 2014 issue), but they have a more intricate history and varied usage.

Square or rectangular shawls draped around the body reputedly originated with the Assyrians (c.2500-605 BC) centred on north Mesopotamia (N Iraq, NE Syria and SE Turkey). Subsequently widely used throughout the Middle East, fine shawls reached Northern India via Persia (Iran), there becoming part of traditional Kashmiri male dress. Significantly, the English word ‘shawl’ derives from Persian shal, meaning a class of textile woven from soft wool. The Kashmir shawl entered Europe in the late 1700s through East India Company trade and colonial expansion. Woven from pashmina, the soft, silky fleece of a species of wild Asian mountain goat, the highly-prized Kashmir was warm, luxuriously fine and ornamented with exotic motifs, most notably the Mughal buta (pine cone), which became increasingly stylised, evolving into the familiar ‘Paisley’ pattern. With luxury Indian shawls highly fashionable throughout the early-mid 19th century, Britain began producing factory-made versions in Norwich, Edinburgh, Paisley and smaller centres – these were successful industries employing thousands of workers, until shawls grew outmoded around 1870.

Regardless of fashion, the urban poor and countrywomen often wore warm shawls instead of longer cloaks. Lengths of cheap fringed woollen cloth called ‘whittles’ or ‘West Country rockets’ were recorded in Somerset, Devon and Cornwall throughout the 1700s – similar to traditional fringed Welsh shawls. Welsh women carried their babies in large ‘nursing shawls’ while they worked, a checked shawl becoming part of Welsh ‘national’ costume during the mid-late 1800s. Ireland was also known for its woven shawls, the Galway Shawl even inspiring a popular Irish folk ballad.

Short workaday shawls were worn by many Victorian working women, from pit girls to fisherwomen, remaining in use until around World War Two, especially in Welsh, Scottish and Irish communities and elsewhere within the Celtic fringe. Shawls are less common today, although pashminas are again fashionable, while others have religious significance such as the Jewish prayer shawl, the tallit .