Jennifer Thermes- Concealment Shoes

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Here are two views of the boot that my husband found in the
dining room ceiling of our home.

Imagine that you live in very old house. You decide to start a restoration project. You rip open a ceiling, or remove a window. What do you find? An old, worn out shoe. Who would put a shoe in the wall? – you wonder. And why?

You have just stumbled upon a "concealment" shoe– the ancient custom of hiding a shoe in a house in order to protect it from harmful spirits.

Little is known about this tradition. It was brought to America by early settlers, mostly from England and Western Europe. Shoes have been discovered in houses dating back to the 1600’s, and in Europe shoes have been found from as long ago as the 14th century. In fact, the Northampton Museum in England has an index that lists over 2,000 concealment shoes.

Shoes were expensive in colonial times. Few people were able to purchase a brand new pair whenever they wanted, so shoes were passed on from person to person until they were too old to be useful. It was these well-worn shoes that were perfect for use as concealments.

Often only a single child’s shoe was hidden, but shoes belonging to women and men have also been found. Sometimes multiple shoes were discovered. They could have been hidden during the original construction of the house or during a later renovation.

Historians think that people may have hidden shoes for the protection and good fortune they could offer. Many people of the time believed that mischievous spirits could enter a house. What could stop these spirits? A shoe molded to the shape of its owner’s foot. If the shoe was hidden near a place easy for spirits to enter, such as a chimney or window, the spirit would think it found the shoe’s owner, and leave the rest of the house alone. It was a superstition, but life in early times could be harsh, and people then, as now, worried about the future. Perhaps they needed to believe in the protection and good fortune a hidden shoe could bring.

During the renovation of my own home, built around the year 1720, my husband found a boot in the ceiling of our dining room. Two years later, we found a shoe under the floorboards. It still had pieces of the wooden pegs that held it together.

These treasures make me think about all of the children who have lived in our home in the nearly 300 years since it was built. Nobody knows for certain why children’s shoes were concealed, but one could imagine– what better than a child, to symbolize hope and promise for the future?

Shown are three different angles of the shoe that we found under
the floorboards. You can still see remnants of the wooden pegs that
held the shoe together on the heel of the bottom shoe.