The lofts of our old farmhouse are floored from end with square terracotta tiles, sometimes called
tomettes. The good condition of these tiles and the care with which any gaps between floor and wall were sealed with cement to exclude "nibblers", indicates that the lofts were used to store grain, until quite recently.
Several of them bear the impression of passing feet. When the burden of tiles was off the roof, we could see them much more clearly: -
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| dog - at a run, followed by variations on a theme of "gerroffit you ..." |
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| Chicken, or chickens |
and - a couple of these....
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| Sabot? |
To me, that looks like the print of a clog iron, from the sole of a child sized clog, complete with nails.
You can buy clog irons, British style, from
Walkley Clogs, of the Yorkshire town of Mythomroyd, a place we visited with Les Hiboux 2CV group.Traditional dance groups, for example, often dance in clogs, to the ruination of many a good wooden dance floor.
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| A set of clog irons, complete with nails, as sold by Walkley's |
We found a sabot (wooden shoe) hidden in the lofts when we first moved in. The practise of hiding shoes in buildings is well documented
here by June Swann. She says that shoes
"are symbols of authority, as in the Old Testament. They are linked with
fertility: we still tie them on the back of wedding cars. And they are
generally associated with good luck (witness all the holiday souvenirs
in the shape of shoes). But most of all they stand in for the person:
it has been a common practise from at least the sixteenth century to at
least 1966 to throw an old shoe after people ‘for luck’."
She concludes that a shoe hidden in the roof may be an "I was here" symbol representing the roofer who finished the work, in a sort of topping-out ceremony. I shall have to ask Loic if one of his team would like to hide an old shoe, without telling us where it is!
Our sabot is made of one piece of birch wood, and is a typical farm worker's clog.
Here is a description (in French) of the sabot-making process, from the genealogy of the Sousquiers family. Agricultural workers would go to the blacksmith to get a reinforcement for the wooden sole, at toe and heel. For the sole this could be an iron plate in the form of an ogive, following the curve of the shoe. Sometimes these were made from a jam pot lid, held on with round-headed hobnails.
- Les cultivateurs préféraient du résistant : ils allaient voir le
forgeron qui usinait des talons métalliques fixés par trois pointes
dans les oreilles de fer. Ces morla emprisonnaient le talon et le garantissaient à la fois de l'usure et de l'éclatement.
- Pour la semelle, deux techniques prévalent : une
plaquette de fer, en forme d'ogive, ou une tôle récupérée dans une
boîte de conserve. La fixation se faisait à l'aide de tachouns
(clous) à tête ronde. L'inconvénient de ces ferrures réside dans le
fait qu'elles " attrapent " la neige ; il faut interrompre la marche
pour dessocar (détacher le bloc de neige).
