shoes&pattens7

27

Shoes from London sites, 1100-1450

styles normally worn by adults (Fig. 38). In con-struction it resembles an early 13th-century drawstring ankle-shoe, having a horizontal seam on the instep and a triangular insert near the base on the inner side (cf. Figs. 21 & 23), but it was fastened by three toggles. The ‘buttonholes’ are cut directly in the flap on the outer side, rather than being on separate tags, and the edge of the flap was reinforced either with an applied band or, morę probably, with plain stitching.

The side-laced boots are all of similar relative height and are very standardised in construction. They are roughly as tali as they are long, and probably reached about a third of the distance to the knee (Figs. 39-40). The uppers were invariably of ‘wrap-around’ type (cf. Fig. 97), and on the inner side there was a very short main seam running from the sole to the bottom pair of lace-holes; this seam, which held the whole boot in shape, must always have been a potential point of weakness, and severe damage can often be seen here (Figs. 39-40). The only additional piece was normally a long rectangular insert which extended the fuli height from the instep; the horizontal seam which joined it to the vamp would have provided flexi-bility at an abrupt change of angle, sińce most boots of this type seem to have fitted the foot quite closely, and the straight vertical seam may have given a rather angular appearance over the shin -especially sińce the boot was generally a little taller at the front than at the back. On very large boots a strip was often used to raise the top edge, just as on boots of the 12th and 13th centuries (cf. Fig. 13), and on one example there is an entire upper section which encircled the quarters and heightened the boot by as much as 80 mm (Fig. 40). Topbands seem to have been provided invari-ably, and the surviving examples are thin strips of leather folded double over the edge. The lace-holes were reinforced with leather facings on the inside (cf. Fig. 97), but there were no tongues, even though the holes reached almost to the ground; regrettably, the laces themselves have not remained in place on any of the boots in the present groups.

The 'Baynards Castle’ assemblage contains