A top hat and a family secret

This paper, a work in progress, considers the impact and repercussions that physical objects and the associated family stories have as they are passed down from one generation to another. Starting with a top hat which belonged to my paternal great grandfather from 1915, it utilises a material culture approach to analyse a gentleman’s item of dress from a personal family “archive” of objects, photographs and documents that belonged to the Wilkins family and by so doing seeks to construct a narrative from fragmentary evidence of a life lived and lost.