It has recently been shown that liquid crystalline elastomers (LCEs) exhibit bulk macroscopic orientation or a ＇polydomain-to-monodomain＇ transition when stretched in uniaxial tension (see for example review articles by : Gleim, W. and Finkelmann, H., Side-Chain Liquid Crystal Polymers, ed. C. B. McArdle. Blackie and Sons Ltd., 1989, p. 287; Zentel, R., Agnew Chem. Adv. Mater., 1989, 101(10), 1437; Barclay, G. G. and Ober, C. K., Prog. Polym. Sci., 1993, 18, 899-945). In order to investigate this phenomenon further, single-step stress relaxation experiments were performed in uniaxial tension on a polydomain, smectic LCE at variable strains relative to the polydomain-to-monodomain transition. It was found that the smectic LCE exhibited a large amount of stress relaxation and could be described at intermediate times ( approximate to 7-3000 s) by a stretched exponential function with a relatively fast characteristic relaxation time ( approximate to 60 s), regardless of the magnitude of the strain. One possible origin of this phenomenon is that the local smectic LC order is transiently disrupted during initial deformation and reorientation of the LC domains. The free energy penalty for this disruption may provide a driving force for reversion back to the original (undeformed) state of order and, correspondingly, a large amount of local chain relaxation. It was also found that the stress relaxation data were divided into two regimes. At low strains (prior to the polydomain-to-monodomain transition) the data exhibited a final relaxed modulus of E-f = 1.8 MPa. Samples stretched to larger strains (greater than the polydomain-to-monodomain transition) were shifted to lower values with E-f = 0.7 MPa.