If you find a shoe in your wall...

... please notify the Northampton Museums and Art Gallery.

We keep a concealed shoe index here at the museum.  At the moment the index stands at approximately 1,900 entries from all over the U.K and also records concealed shoe finds in North America, Canada, and a number of countries in Europe including France, Spain and Poland.

They note:

• The shoes are always worn out.

• Very often there is only one shoe.

• Many of the shoes are for children.

• The shoes were often put in place when building work was being done to the house.

• It may be that if the workmen found a shoe they replaced it with a new offering, or put the old shoe back together with a new one?

• No one knows when and how this habit began.

• The earliest shoes we know of were put in place about 1500.

Embedded image from the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, via the Washington Post.

Addendum:  a tip of the blogging hat to reader "another phil" for providing the link to this comprehensive review of the subject.