The Iron Age Horseshoe and its Derivatives

Extract

Our ancestors were making horseshoes of a characteristic type at the very beginning of the Roman occupation. It was a highly developed type, and its elaboration, whether here or upon the Continent, presumably occupied many preceding years. It is this first type which it is proposed to describe as the Iron Age horseshoe. Its various characteristic features were slowly modified during succeeding centuries, but they were not finally lost until about the twelfth or thirteenth century A.D. From a survey of the various specimens which seem to have been in use during this long period there emerge derivatives of the Iron Age shoe, some of which are sufficiently distinctive to deserve the status of subtypes. Towards the end of the period we begin to meet with shoes which are medieval in their general characters, but which show that the technique of the Iron Age was still not wholly forgotten. Such specimens are conveniently described as transitional, but it is sometimes difficult to be sure whether individual shoes are genuine derivatives of the Iron Age shoe or examples of an entirely new, and possibly Norman, pattern, modified by traditional methods of manufacture.