72089 shoes&pattens8

118

Shoes and Pattens

to be confirmed by the materiał from the late 14th-century dumps at ‘Baynards Castle’ in particular (see above, Table 6 and pp. 28-9), but it contrasts with sites on the Continent, notably Liibeck, where the dominant shoe types were Iow front-laced shoes with two pairs of holes, and front-laced ankle-shoes with five pairs of holes (Groenman-van Waateringe pers. comm.). Amsterdam also contrasts with London in the absence of low-cut strapped shoes, but the rangę of front-laced shoes is similar (cf. Figs. 56-7 with Groenman-van Waateringe & Velt 1975, 103, Abb. 5.4-5). The front and side-laced shoes in the London collection - except where there is con-tinuous lacing - have paired holes which could be closed by latchets, (cf. Fig. 55); there are few examples with uneven numbers of lace-holes (cf. Fig. 58 with ibid., Abb. 5.3). Fig. 27, dated to the early 13th century, closely resembles a 14th-century Dutch shoe (ibid., Abb. 5.2): both are of one-piece ‘wrap-around’ construction, with tri-angular inserts, and have continuous side-lacing.

By the early 15th century, however, it is Iow side-laced ankle-boots that dominate both the archaeological assemblages and the brasses. An outstanding example of 15th-century footwear occurs on the brass of Nicholas Canteys (d. 1431) in Margate. Canteys wears Iow ankle-boots with a topband, embroidered decoration and continuous lacing up the side through seven pairs of lace-holes (Fig. 159). Except for the decoration, the style is very similar to the shoes from Trig Lane illus-trated in Figs. 69-70, the dominant type in groups from this datę. The brass of Thomas Bokenham (d. 1460), in St. Stephen’s Church, Norwich, also depicts shoes reminiscent of those from Trig Lane, namely boots fastened at the ankle with what seems to be a pair of smali buckles (Fig. 160; cf. Fig. 66). The generał styling is similar, although the shoes on the brass, post-dating the excavated examples by some 20 years, are morę pointed and reflect the return to fashion of the ‘poulaine’ in the mid 15th century.

Kelly and Schwabe (1972, 32) suggest that it was at this time that boot vamps started to be cut separately from the boot leg, and indeed in the present collection, the boots remain predomi-nantly of one-piece, or ‘wrap-around’, construction until the early/mid 15th-century groups from Trig Lane. There are certainly numbers of Iow boots, and even boots reaching half-way between

159 Detail from the brass of Nicholas Canteys (d. 1431) in St. John’s Church, Margate, Kent. He wears embroidered ankle-shoes fastened by side-lacing. It seems that a single continuous lace was used.

160 Detail from the brass of Thomas Bokenham (d. 1460) in St. Stephen’s Church, Norwich.

the ankle and the knee, prior to the 15th century, but the total absence of identifiable fragments of higher boots is notable, even when the freąuency of leather reuse is taken into account. Professor Groenman-van Waateringe has suggested (pers. comm.) that many of the vamps recovered in ex-cavation may be from boots in which the vamp and