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Shoes and Pattens

It was also in the late 14th century that heel straps were provided for the first time. The fragment shown in Fig. 134 was madę from two layers of leather - one of which is now mostly lost -sewn together along the edges with a binding stitch and nailed to the sole at the sides and heel. To protect the leather from chafing under the nail heads was a thin leather strip which acted as a ‘washer’ and probably ran completely around the sole. The strap itself probably extended over the instep and was fastened with a buckie, as on a patten recently excavated on the City of London Boys’ School site (in 1986, too late to be included in this volume).

Hinged wooden pattens with fiat soles continued to be wom in the first half of the 15th century. The type raised on wedges is surprisingly absent from both Trig Lane and Swan Lane, though its con-tinuing popularity is attested both by contem-porary illustrations and surviving examples in the established collections of the Museum of London (see below, p. 119). Early 15th-century pattens had extremely waisted soles and rather blunt,