The Daily Populous Thursday December 25th, 2025 night edition
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Mystery as hundreds of Victorian shoes wash up on beach

1 day ago Share Save Angela Ferguson BBC Wales Share Save

Beach Academy CIC The hobnailed boots were found during a clean up of rock pools on Ogmore 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 (two miles) 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.

Beach Academy CIC The shoes washed up on the beach while volunteers were cleaning up marine litter from a rock pool

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".

Shoes like these have been known to wash up on the beach at Ogmore and Llantwit over the years, Emma Lamport said

"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.

Emma Lamport said more than 400 of the boots had been found on the beach

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.

Peter Britton Peter Britton has photographed Tusker Rock and studied some of the shipwrecks there, including French steamer the SS Liban which ran aground in 1882 with the loss of three lives

mtheory007 on December 24th, 2025 at 00:42 UTC »

Just a perfectly normal victorian sea ghosts shoes.

WolfsToothDogFood on December 23rd, 2025 at 22:59 UTC »

I'm guessing a shipwreck turned over, and people's shoes floated to the surface, while their skeletons stayed on the seabed.

Casual_hex_ on December 23rd, 2025 at 22:23 UTC »

Nothing creepy about that!