Clogs were the footwear of farmers, rural workers, brewery workers and, of course, millworkers. The more expensive were carved to fit the wearer’s foot. Hardwearing, they were made from wood which doesn’t splinter e.g. birch, alder or sycamore and, for better durability, hobnails or irons shaped like horseshoes were fitted to the sole, the sound of which echoed on cobblestones in industrial northern cities. The leather uppers were nailed to the wooden sole.
After the Industrial Revolution, clog making and wearing was largely regional, confined to Wales and mill towns in Lancashire and Yorkshire. It waned after the First World War apart from mill towns. There were revivals during the Second World War; clogs weren’t rationed so no coupons were required. During both world wars, when rubber for soles was required for the war effort, munition workers wore clogs without irons to prevent potentially fatal sparks. There was a brief hippy revival in the 1960s with Dr Scholls.
At the time of writing, there are only two traditional cloggers left in England making clogs entirely by hand; Walkely Clogs in Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire and Jeremy Atkinson in Herefordshire. Clog making demonstrations are occasionally held at Blists Hill, Ironbridge and Jeremy Atkinson occasionally does craft shows. See www.clogmaker.co.uk.
A job associated with clog making was the clog blocker who, working in gangs, chopped wood into rough sizes for children’s, men’s and women’s feet.
There are several reasons for the demise of clogmakers. Fashion, the preference for hobnailed boots instead of clogs and the rise of machine-made clog soles.
The earliest trade unions were founded in the early 1800s and there were lots of them. Many were localised, such as the Edinburgh Operative Cordwainers Trade Protection and Friendly Society (1822) and records for 1912–56 are in the National Archives. There were specific unions such as the Amalgamated Journeyman Cloggers and Allied Workers (founded 1830) which, in Oldham in 1911, had 739 members. Bolton had its own cloggers union in existence in 1831. A useful directory for these unions is John B. Smethurst and Peter Carter’s Historical Directory of Trade Unions Volume Six found on the internet under a hugely long URL but located with a Google search. Many unions amalgamated into the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives (1898) and the records including 1850-70s branch union books are held in the Warwick University Modern Record Centre. The union branch was known by the factory name so if someone moved jobs within the town, you will know by the change in their branch name. Other records, where they survive, are found in local record offices.
The London Company of Cordwainers’ records are held at Guildhall and can be searched on microfilm for free. The main genealogical information they hold is the Freedom records (1678 to present) and the Apprenticeship records from 1709 to 1965. They will do research for you for a fee of £20 plus VAT per name, but can’t guarantee success.
In the 1870s, the Cordwainers and Leathersellers Companies set up a Cordwainers’ College teaching footwear and leather trades to young people. The archives, consisting of a shoe collection, some journals, records and photographs of the College are held at the London College of Fashion and the shoe collection, many too fragile to exhibit, together with ephemera such as tools and lasts can be seen online at www.vads.ac.uk/collections/LCFSHOE.html.
There were other guilds throughout the country e.g. York and Cardiff, with records held locally. York Cordwainers Guild http://yorkcordwainers.webplus.net/index.html exists today as a philanthropic society and to promote the footwear and leather industries. The medieval guild disbanded in 1808 and its records were sent to the York Minster www.yorkminster.org where collections include ordinances for 1580–1694, 1580–1694 (with some signatures) for tanners, curriers, cordwainers and shoemakers. You will need a reader’s ticket and an appointment. Durham Cordwainers’ Guild and Curriers’ records for the sixteenth to twentieth centuries are at the university, which also holds records for the seventeenth century for tanners and barkers who tanned leather using the bark of trees.
For Cardiff and Wales, British History Online, edited by John Hobson Matthews, itemises records for cordwainers and glovers including lists of members and their dates http://www.british-history.ac.uk/source.aspx?pubid=375. This website also lists company proceedings from 1676–1801, with names and other documents.
Northampton Museum and Art Gallery’s shoe and boot collection and shoemakers’ index, part on database and part on index cards, is one of the foremost collections in the world. Contact the museum with the relevant name and date and the museum can check them against the index. The museum is a mine of information on the history of major manufacturing companies, mainly in Northampton but also around the country. Northampton Museum and Art Gallery has a file containing books and articles on clog making and cloggers, but records for clogmakers are few, although apprentice records may be in local record offices. The museum sends business papers to the relevant local record office and you should check there. The museum has photos, trade catalogues for countrywide companies, a display of 1,000 shoes and a collection of over 13,000 shoes from around the world dating from Egyptian footwear to today; they actively encourage people to donate shoes. They also have runs of Shoe and Leather Record, Shoe and Leather News, Boot and Shoe Trade Journals and St Crispin. For further information, contact the museum via www.northampton.gov.uk/museumcollections.
The periodical Shoe and Leather News was published weekly from April 1916. It is an amazing record of the shoe industry, with adverts encompassing the whole industry as well as biographical information and articles about factories and owners/proprietors. Many adverts have photographs; for instance, Pollard and Son, Northampton, founded 1857 has three generations, the founder, E. Pollard, his son and grandson who joined the firm in 1900. The gazette element of the magazine includes, among other things, commercial and financial information around the country, bankruptcies and bills of sale, tribunals (not everyone is named), wills, obituaries, court cases and bankruptcies. Some wills include biographical information including hobbies and cause of death. Be prepared for a long hike through the magazines; they are not indexed so knowing dates is crucial. Finding someone is a bonus.
Bata’s records www.batamemories.org.uk are held near the factory site at Bata Reminiscence and Resource Centre, East Tilbury Library, Princess Avenue, East Tilbury, Essex, RM18 8ST www.thurrock.gov.uk/find-a-library/east-tilbury-library. There is a small exhibition and regular open days are advertised online. Records can be visited by appointment; Bata volunteers are available at the library (01375 844921) Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturday mornings at the time of writing. There is an extensive website including an index to former employees and short articles about some of them.
It may be worth checking the British Book Trade Index www.bbti.bham.ac.uk. Many tanners, curriers and fellmongers (hide and skin dealers) also worked peripherally in the parchment and paper making industries. This index has references to tradesmen years prior to the first useful census of 1841 and typing in a surname or name of a town might foster results. Newport Pagnell, for instance, brings up William Davis (it’s harder to find specific ancestry records for a common surname) working as apprentice leather dresser/currier in 1716 and the source was the SoG’s lists of masters and apprentices. His master was William Ward.
• Jeremy Atkinson, clog maker, occasionally does craft shows. See his website for details at www.clogmaker.co.uk
• Northampton Museum and Art Gallery (shoe and boot collection), Northampton, www.northampton.gov.uk/info/200243/museums St Fagans National History Museum, Cardiff where Geraint Parfitt hand-makes clogs www.museumwales.ac.uk/stfagans
• Shoe Museum, Street, Somerset www.streettic.co.uk/index.php?q=Shoe-Museum.html
• Ward of Cordwainer www.cordwainer.co.uk/content.php?id=67 information about the London ward including the Cordwainer statue (2002), Watling Street, London.