Why Have Hundreds Of Victorian Shoes Washed Up On A UK Beach? Locals Puzzled

Locals in a Welsh county have been perplexed after hundreds of Victorian hobnailed shoes mysteriously washed up on a beach. The black leather boots were discovered by three volunteers who were cleaning up rockpools on Ogmore By Sea Beach in the Vale of Glamorgan, south Wales.

"It was mostly men's boots and very small children's shoes - young girls' shoes made out of leather. They looked like they might have belonged to little handmaids," Emma Lamport, 56, from the Beach Academy group, which found the shoes, was quoted as saying by The Telegraph.

Lamport added that this week alone, the group had discovered 200 shoes in one small area during a rockpool restoration. She has been involved with the project since September to clean up marine litter, which can become embedded in the rockpools. However, Lamport admitted that she did not expect to find hundreds of Victorian shoes.

"We are slowly excavating them from rockpool zones where they have been embedded into sediment or trapped in rocks as part of our Rockpool restoration project. We have no idea how long they have actually been trapped there! Many stories I'm sure. 200 removed in Ogmore alone this week," the Beach Academy wrote in a Facebook post.

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Italian Shipwreck

Quizzed about the origins, Lamport speculated that the boots may have come from an Italian ship that sank nearby 150 years ago after colliding with the Tusker Rock. She said the cargo of leather boats may have sunk alongside the ship and ended up embedded in the river banks, with the currents releasing them now and again.

"We found one patch which was just strewn with shoes. To find so many in such a small area, I mean, we didn't even do the entire beach, was a real surprise. We were a little bit unnerved because we didn't know where they'd come from in such large numbers. With something so old and historic, the story is a real mystery."

The discovery comes a month after scientists recovered a cannon, three coins and a porcelain cup from San Jose, a Spanish galleon shipwreck believed to hold one of history's greatest lost treasures, valued at around $16 billion.