shoes&pattens 0

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Shoes and Pattens

the forepart, or vice versa. It is impossible to iden-tify with certainty any shoes in the collection that have been resoled in this way, although abnormal clusters of stitches along the lasting-margins of the upper indicate that some have been at least partially remade.

Very much morę common are separate repair-soles of the type that should apparently be attri-buted only to cobblers. These ‘clumps’ are thick, irregularly-shaped pieces of leather and were attached with tunnel-stitching (Fig. 123). Nor-mally, separate pieces were used for the heel and forepart. The sole and its clump occasionally survive together (Figs. 94, 98) but morę often the only evidence that a shoe has been ‘clouted’ is provided by stitch-marks, either on the sole (Fig. 83) or Iow down on the upper (Figs. 84, 106). As Table 15 shows, over half the shoes in some groups have repair-soles, and it is tempting to

infer from this that they may have had two, if not morę, owners before they were finally discarded. Eąually striking is the very Iow proportion (less than 10 per cent) in the late 14th-century ‘Bay-nards Castle’ group. Since, theoretically at least, this should imply that the former owners of the rubbish discarded in the inlet could afford new rather than reconditioned shoes, and even perhaps that they had them repaired by accredited cordwainers, then again (see above, p. 29) we might speculate that this deposit represents an above-average stratum of society.

Comparatively few uppers in any of the groups seem to have been repaired (Table 15). Occasionally, additional stitch impressions suggest that a seam has been remade, but the most common type of repair is a patch sewn in on the inside of the shoe with binding-stitch (in the manner of a heel-stiffener or lace-hole reinforcement) to cover a worn area or hole. One of the clearest examples of this is shown in Fig. 104: here, two successive patches appear to have been added to strengthen the side seam, perhaps after the shoe had split apart. Repairs of this kind seem not to have been common, however, probably because the soles will have worn through long before the uppers, rendering many shoes worthless after only a few months’ use.

123 Method used to attach repair soles (‘clumps’). These invariably came in two sections - heel and forepart - and were sewn on with tunnel-stitches, which were often widely-spaced and irregular. When all the stitches had been madę, the thread would have been pulled tight and tied.