15981 shoes&pattens2

22

Shoes and Pałłens

32 Late 13th-century ankle-shoe. Scalę 1:3 approx.

Ludgate and, probably, Trig Lane there is a greater rangę of fastenings, but toggles still account for well over half the types recorded. They were used on boots and shoes madę in a variety of styles. The simplest, invariably a shoe or ankle-shoe cut below or on the linę of the ankle, has a pair of identical flaps, each with a ‘button-hole’ for fastening to a single toggle in the centre of the vamp throat. The first illustrated example (Fig. 29) is madę entirely in one piece - though very often (c/. Fig. 31 and Fig. 36 from a subseąuent group) one of the flaps was madę as a separate insert - and there is a long semicircular tongue which runs right across the vamp throat to provide flexibility over the instep while at the same time covering the open areas behind the flaps. The front of the shoe is almost completely lost, and originally there was a topband stitched to all the upper edges except the tongue. The toggle, also now missing, would have been formed from a leather lace whose end was rolled back on itself, passed through a slit and pulled tight; the other end was then threaded through the perforation in the vamp throat and stitched down on the underside.

On at least one shoe of this type the vamp has been slashed through with a knife. The toe of the illustrated example has been sliced off and the slashes, which take the form of elongated lozenges, seem originally to have been arranged roughly in two bands across the foot (Fig. 30). This was probably done for decorative or practical purposes, to create a form of open sandał, but it might possibly be compared with the process of ritual defacement whereby shoes are placed as a good-luck offering in the chimney or attic of a new building. In her discussion of a similarly-slashed 15th-century shoe from the Austin Friars, Leicester, Clare Allin (Mellor & Pearce 1981, 155; foliowing Swann) has traced this practice -well attested in early modem times - back into the 17th century but not definitely into the medieval period.

Ankle-shoes rising slightly higher over the ankle were normally provided with two or three toggles (Figs. 32-3). They were very similar in style and construction to the shoes already described, ex-cept that on the inner side was an insert which carried a single ‘buttonhole’ and either one or two toggles passing through slots and stitched down on the inside. To close the shoe, the flaps were first secured independently to the toggle on the vamp and then were ‘buttoned’ together to pro-tect the higher parts of the instep (Fig. 32). In some cases the edges of the flaps were strength-ened with a cord; normally this ran along the inside surface and was held in place by a second, finer thread stitched across it (see further p. 51 and Fig. 81), but on one of the illustrated examples (Fig. 33) it seems that the cord itself was stitched through the leather, because there is a row of short but broad stitch impressions running in the same direction as the ‘buttonholes’.