# Concealed shoes

*The hidden shoe*

**Known today as.** Worn-out shoes, often a child’s, hidden in walls, chimneys, under floors, and above ceilings.

Kind: Amulet

## What was it used for?

Probably a protection of the house: such shoes were among the things hidden at its openings, the hearth, the threshold, and its voids, against witchcraft and other dark forces. No explanation is certain; June Swann, who long kept the record of them, concluded that “at present we can only surmise.”

## What does modern science say?

Most are found by builders and householders when old buildings are altered.

## What lore surrounds it?

Most date from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. By 1995 the Northampton Museum’s index recorded over 1,100 concealments, from most counties in Britain and from Europe, North America, and Australia.

## What did the older authorities say?

**The Catholic Encyclopedia.** The Catholic Encyclopedia defines the vain observances to which such hidings belong as “all those beliefs and practices which, at least by implication, attribute supernatural or preternatural powers for good or for evil to causes evidently incapable of producing the expected effects,” and adds, with some charity, that “many superstitions of our own day have been acts of genuine piety at other times, and may be so still in the hearts of simple folk.” Their apparent success “can mostly be accounted for by natural causes,” and on their side “there are arrayed the religious instinct, sympathy and apathy, confidence and distrust, encouragement and discouragement, self-suggestion and — perhaps strongest of all — the healing power of nature.”

## Sources

- Hoggard, B. (2019). *Magical House Protection: The Archaeology of Counter-Witchcraft*. New York: Berghahn.
- *The Catholic Encyclopedia* (New York, 1907–1914), “Superstition.” newadvent.org/cathen/14339a.htm
- Swann, J. (1996). Shoes concealed in buildings. *Costume* 30: 56–69.

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*Concealed shoes.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-03. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/concealed-shoes

Historical description, not medical advice.