OLD FASHIONED SHOES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 409, 19 December 1932, Page 2

OLD FASHIONED SHOES

VALUABLE DlSCOYERY. MADE BY WORKMEN IN LONDON Beneath a building site in Little Britain, in the City of London, workmen have uncovered a series of fifty shoes which disclose the fashions affected by Londoners from th'e time of the' Black Prince to Henry the Seventh. The shoes ara for the most part in an excellent state of preservation, but since many of them are obviously well-worn they are thought to have been thrown away by their owners into a tributary of the city diteh which has long since been filled in. The collection, which is now in the possession of the Guildhall Museum, has been described as the finest single series of the lcind which has been found in the city. "The earliest of the shoes show the toes grotesquely turned out," an official stated, "corresponding to the fashion which is shown in the effigy of the Black Prince at Canterbury. This appears even in a child's shoe about 6in long, although its general shape is more sensible. "Th'ese shoes also show a padded 'toe' extending far beyond the foot, ain extravfagant fashion which did. not last very long. The next development was what may be described as a nonnal pointed shoe, well shaped to the foot in very much the modern manner. "The collection also includes the very wide shoe of the time of Henry VII., which almost resembles a tennis racquet — or, at any rate, a squash racquet — in appearance.] The flattened uppers fit round the sole very much like a eover round a racquet." Many of the shoes are of very fine workmanship, and one or two look surpi'isingly new to have been thrown away. But they are fragile for out of doors. There have also been found many soled "dogs," which could be worn beneath them when the streets, as was usually the case in the Middle Ages, were muddy.