shoes&pattens1

Shoes from London sites, 1100-1450

5 Early/mid 12th-century ankle-shoe. Scalę 1:3 approx.

Most shoes were pointed at the toe, but rarely can this have been so exaggerated as on two ankle-shoes from Seal House (Figs. 5-6). The toes curve outwards slightly at the tip and may originally have been stuffed to retain their shape, though no evidence for this survives. This was a style which earlier London finds and historical sources show to have originated in the late llth century (Pritchard forthcoming), but which is found only rarely in deposits post-dating c.1150. Both shoes are large, so that they were probably wom by men, and are of similar one-piece con-struction with a diagonal main seam on the inner side. One is complete but for a smali insert at the vamp throat and was fastened by quite a broad drawstring (width of impression, 6 mm) passing through a single row of slots (Fig. 5). As on many shoes of this datę {cf. Figs. 7, 8) and later, there are the impressions of a binding-stitch on the top edge. From the late 13th century onwards this almost invariably seems to mark the former pre-sence of a leather edging strip, or ‘topband’, but for the 12th and early 13th centuries, when very few such topbands have survived, other explan-ations are possible. It could have been used to secure a fabric or fur lining which is now missing or it may be that the edge was merely bound with thread. The arrangements at the front of the shoe are unclear, but the position of the stitching (Fig. 83) suggests that the missing insert ran right across the instep and may even have overlapped the smali flap on the other side. In this way the upper parts of the shoe could be pulled apart, to allow easy insertion of the foot, and then closed to form a snug, double-thickness seal. The second ankle-shoe reąuired no inserts and appears to have been a slip-on type with no additional fastening (Fig. 6). In this case, the absence of stitching (Fig. 84) shows that there was an opening at the vamp throat, and, as on most shoes of this datę, the leather has been cut and seamed across the instep to provide flexibility at the point where it bends sharply from the horizontal to the yertical planes.