78660 shoes&pattens 3

93

Pattens

126 Wooden patten (early 13th-century). Clenched iron nails hołd the iron stand at the back and the reinforcement strip covering the carved wedge beneath the bali of the foot. The leather toe strap is also nailed on, and rows of grain/flesh stitches suggest that it was originally bound with leather edging (cf. Fig. 127). The forepart has been roughly sawn to shape, and an iron strip has been nailed on and folded over. Scalę 1:3.

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piece at the toe, a protective strip beneath the wedge and a stand under the heel. The toe strap was held to the sides with iron nails and, although broken, seems originally to have been a single piece of leather.

By far the largest group of wooden pattens may be assigned to the second half of the 14th century, the product of excavations at ‘Baynards Castle’, Billingsgate and Trig Lane (Table 21). The soles are mostly in poor condition, but at least one resembled the earlier Seal House example, having a sole shaped from one błock, with wedges to raise it high off the ground (Fig. 127). Yet it is much morę carefully finished and, to judge from the presence of a third wedge beneath the toes, the sole may have extended into a long ‘poulaine’ to conform with the most fashionable shoes of the period. There was a single broad band over the toes, madę from two pieces of leather joined at the centre and decorated with stamped florets, but some pattens of this datę were provided with toe bands that were adjustable (Figs. 128-131). This was normally done by passing a strap on one side through a slit in a strap on the other and pinning the two together with an iron nail. The example in Fig. 130 shows a variation whereby one strap was bifurcated and a pair of slits and nails was used.

With practice it would have been possible to walk ąuite normally in pattens such as those illus-trated in Figs. 126-7 by rocking from one wedge to another, but many late 14th-century pattens had soles which rested fiat on the ground (Figs. 128, 133-4). Some had long ‘poulaines’, and it was probably so that they could be worn morę easily by those accustomed to ordinary shoes that they were madę in two parts which were hinged together. This will have allowed the patten to flex with the tread of the foot. Normally the hinge was a double-thickness leather strip nailed into a rebate in the sole (Fig. 133); but one example (not illustrated), which is fragmentary and, unusually, of beech (Jagus sp.) rather than alder or willow/poplar, may have had a complete leather sole nailed across the heel and forepart to act as a hinge and, at the same time, to make it morę comfortable to wear.