Mystery as hundreds of Victorian shoes wash up on beach

Mystery surrounds the appearance of hundreds of Victorian hobnailed shoes which have washed ashore on a beach.

The black leather boots, thought to date back to the 19th Century, were discovered by volunteers cleaning up rock pools on Ogmore By Sea Beach in the Vale of Glamorgan, south Wales.

Emma Lamport from the Beach Academy social enterprise which found the shoes said there was speculation locally that they could be from a shipwrecked Italian cargo vessel said to have struck nearby Tusker Rock about 150 years ago.

Author and mudlarker Lara Maiklem said the boots were "definitely Victorian" and likely to have come from a shipwreck due to the quantity found.

It is thought the shipwreck could have occurred at nearby Tusker Rock, which is about 3km (2m) west of Ogmore beach and only visible at low tide.

Ms Lamport said this week alone they had discovered 200 shoes in one small area during a rockpool restoration on Ogmore beach.

She explained they had been doing a restoration project since September in a bid to clean up marine litter which can become embedded in the rockpools, but certainly did not expect to find hundreds of Victorian shoes.

Ms Lamport shared photos of some of the washed up boots on social media in a bid to solve the mystery of where they came from.

She said one theory was that the Italian ship sank with a cargo of leather shoes and these were washed up the River Ogmore and ended up embedded in the river banks "and every now and again they are released".

"Some of the boots are in pretty good condition and with some you can very clearly see they are a men's boot," added Ms Lamport, who lives in Ogmore.

She said she thought some of the boots found were children's as they were so small, but Ms Maiklem said these could be women's shoes "as people had much smaller feet in those days".

Ms Maiklem has written four books about mudlarking, which was historically a trade of poor Victorians and is now a popular hobby involving unearthing historical artefacts from the silt on river banks.

Photographer Peter Britton, from Porthcawl, has produced artwork Ghost Ships and Tides, based on Tusker Rock and in tribute to those lost at sea.

He said it was "absolutely fascinating" how these boots had suddenly appeared as "little reminders of history".

Academic Dr Michael Roberts, from Bangor University's School of Ocean Sciences, is in the process of studying shipwrecks around the coast of Wales.

He said that while he was not aware of the particular shipwreck which was the subject of speculation in Ogmore, it was possible that shipwrecks from the Victorian era could now be starting to degrade and fall apart.

Previous social media posts shared in the Ogmore community have flagged up similar experiences of shoes washing ashore.

One such post from three years ago shared photos of similar footwear, with one person commenting that they had also found "tiny leather hobnail boots" on the beach.