BURIED FOR 400 YEARS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21828, 15 December 1932, Page 14

BURIED FOR 400 YEARS

SHOES OF PAST AGES DISCOVERY IN LONDON. Beneath a building site in Little Britain, in the' city of London, workmen have uncovered a series of 50 shoes which disclose the fashions affected by Londoners from the time of the Black Prince to Hcnrv the Seventh. . . The shoes are for the most park in an excellent state of preservation, hut since many of them are obviously well-worn they are thought to have been thrown by their owners into a tributary of the city ditch which has long since been filled m. The collection, which is now in the possession of the Guildhall Museum, has been described as the finest single Berms of the kind which has been found in the 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. , “These shoes also show a padded toe extending far beyond the foot, an extravacant fashion which did not last very long. The next development was what may be described as a normal 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 Vll. which almost resembles a tennis-racket —or at any rate a squash-racket—in appearance. The flattened uppers fit round the sole very much like a cover round a racket.” . Many of the shoes are of- very hue 'workmanship, and one or two look surprisingly new to have been thrown away. But they are fragile for out of doors. There have also been found many soled “clogs,” which could be worn beneath them when the streets, as was usually the case in the Middle Ages, were muddy.