Welsh hat

The Welsh hat worn by women as part of Welsh national costume is a tall stovepipe-style hat, similar to a top hat, or the capotain. It is still worn by women, and particularly schoolgirls, in Wales on St David's Day, but rarely on other occasions.

Two main shapes of Welsh hat were made during the 19th century: those with drum shaped (vertical sided) crowns were worn in north-west Wales, and those with slightly tapering crowns were found in the rest of Wales.

The Welsh hat first appeared during the 1830s. It is said that the Welsh hat was part of a traditional Welsh national costume propagated by Lady Llanover but it is unlikely that she had much influence on anyone other than her friends and servants.

The Welsh hat may have developed from a number of types of tall hat including the riding hat, which ladies wore during the early part of the 19th century, (as illustrated in the Llanover prints) but no evidence has been discovered which explains why, during the late 1830s, the tall hat with the stiff, flat brim, (which is unique to the Welsh hat), replaced the other types of men’s hat worn by many rural women in Wales at the time.

By the late 1840s the Welsh hat had become an icon of Wales and was used in cartoons to represent Wales as a nation. It may be that the use of this exceptional headgear, worn by the women of rural Wales, as an icon of what was perceived by many as a male-dominated industrial society can be explained by the fact that it is such a simple and unique shape. Whatever the reason, it certainly brought forward the image of a happy, hearty, healthy, hard-working Welsh woman, who, quite probably, kept her family alive during difficult times. It became part of the National identity and was normally worn with the other elements of Welsh costume, especially the bedgown or betgwyn. It continued in use as an icon of Wales in tourist literature to this day.

The women's tall hats are often cited as a deciding factor in terminating the attempted Last invasion of Britain by Napoleonic forces in 1797. The French soldiers are said to have mistaken the women, seen at a distance returning from work in the fields, carrying pitchforks and wearing red shawls and tall Welsh hats, for a detachment of British "redcoats", whose uniform included tall black hats or shakoes. This is a possible misconception as the Welsh hat, in the form we know today at least, didn't exist as such, until much later. There is much anecdotal evidence to suggest that women in rural Wales had taken to wearing Stovepipe or Top Hats manufactured for men, by the 1790s as this article on the ceredigion county council website attests. Quite why the women in this one corner of the British Isles chose to adopt this traditional male headgear is unknown but it has been suggested that they were imitating the tall riding hats they saw gentlewomen wear while out riding.

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Wikipedia