One of the earliest items of costume destroyed in the fire was a lady's jacket of around 1600 with well-preserved polychrome silk and silver thread embroidery. The original Ulster Museum costume collection had a good selection of 18th-century garments costume, most with local connections such as a Spitalfields silk robe and petticoat of c.1745 which had on the linen lining the stamp 'Sam Holmes – County Down'. Specimens of ladies' dresses existed for almost every year from the end of the eighteenth century until the 1970s. There were gaps in the range of men's costume, the eighteenth century being one of the best represented periods. The lace collection was comprehensive but with a bias towards Irish manufacturers. Lace had been collected on a proper systematic basis for longer than any other category of costume or textiles.