14th October 2026
A slightly more relaxed start to the day than my third trip but still up at 6am and at the river by my 8am target. As planned, the tide was going out and a couple of hours until low tide meant a good 4 or 5 hours of larking about lay ahead!!
The weather was great – no jacket required – and the foreshore looked excellent. Who knew what the day would produce?
Well, in the event, there was nothing to unduly trouble the Finds Liaison Officer (FLO) although, as you will see below, I did have one question to ask him!!
I could have brought home dozens more bottle, pottery and pipe fragments but, as you know from my last post, I have resolved to leave these on the foreshore from now on unless they are super interesting. I couldn’t resist bringing a few bits home, though….
By far my favourite find today turned out not to be pottery, glass or metal at all.
It was leather!!
It just goes to show that not every interesting find from the Thames foreshore is a coin or a piece of pottery. Sometimes it’s something much more personal.
This heavily worn and damaged leather shoe sole measures approximately 165 mm long and 60 mm at its widest point. Although incomplete, it retains much of its original shape, with distinctive notches running along both edges.
The leather has survived in the river environment for an unknown length of time, leaving us with a tangible fragment of London’s past.
I sent photographs to the FLO, who considers it likely to be a 19th-century shoe.
We will never know who wore it, where they walked, or how it eventually ended up in the Thames. Perhaps it belonged to a Londoner going about their daily business, a worker heading down to the river, or someone whose journey ended at the water’s edge.
Whatever its story, this humble piece of footwear is a reminder that the Thames preserves traces of ordinary lives as well as the more spectacular objects we sometimes uncover. For me, it’s the standout find from Session 4.
