Concealed Shoes in Historic Buildings
A record in The Hawthorn Archive, preserving folklore with its place, type and source context attached.
Shoes deliberately concealed within walls, roofs, chimneys and other parts of historic buildings form part of the material record of British protective custom. Their exact meanings are not always recoverable, but placement in structural boundaries has encouraged interpretation alongside other apotropaic deposits.
The object itself is evidence. Its supernatural efficacy is not. A responsible archive record therefore preserves location, date and context without pretending that every concealed shoe had one nationally standardised purpose.
Source trail: Ashmolean Museum Spellbound material and research on concealed objects in historic buildings.
Related Journal record: Folk Magic in Britain.