UNUSUAL stories about Oxfordshire?s past will be unveiled at a new exhibition that looks at the history of hats and shoes.
The show ? Head over Heels ? at The Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock, explores headwear and footwear through a range of subjects, revealing amongst many other things secretive local traditions and how the items became fashionable.
Shoes bricked into walls
Museum visitors can discover more about the mystery of why shoes are often found bricked into walls near windows or doors or in roofs in properties in southern England.
Theories around the practice include the idea of protecting a property from evil forces or that the essence of the wearer remained in the shoe because it had become moulded to their foot. The show includes a pair of heavily-worn clogs found in a roof in Standlake, which are thought to be part of a cache of concealed garments.
Part of the free-to-view exhibition in the Park Street venue is split into sections ? work, shopping, performance, mystery and childhood ? which document various items, including an animal headdress worn in 1885 during a Tudor pageant staged by Lord and Lady Wantage at their Lockinge Manor home.
The exhibition reveals that style was important to shoe-wearers long before the appearance around a century ago of familiar high street names which enable many people to purchase footwear in styles often seen by the rich and famous. It will display leather fragments of rounded- and pointed-toe shoes dating between 1300 and 1500 that were found during a 1970 excavation of Oxford Castle Barbican.
Range of local exhibits
Other items that will be on show at the exhibition, which runs from Saturday 16 June to Sunday 9 September, include:
A woman?s hat with feathers that was worn in the latter part of the nineteenth century in Middle Barton. Feathers at the time were extremely expensive and popular, to the extent that it led to the foundation in 1889 of the Society for the Protection of Birds, due to the international trade in rare bird feathers
Former Mayor of Oxford Sir Robert Buckell?s bowed shoes, bought from R Gillman and Son, a shop in Cornmarket Street, Oxford.
A beekeeper?s hat, possibly home-made, worn in the earlier part of the last century in Steeple Aston
First World War sheepskin boots owned in the Abingdon area which were worn by airmen as early aircraft did not have heaters due to the need to be as light as possible
A 1700s-style cocked hat worn in the mid-twentieth century by the High Sheriff of Oxfordshire ? a role dating back to 1066.
A white cap worn by the 1930s by a maid at Swyncombe House, near Wallingford. Staff being caught not wearing their caps were frowned upon in some households at the time
Museums worked together
The exhibition is the culmination of the first-ever joint venture by city, county, university and independent museums and collections, which also involved a show at The Museum of Oxford which ran until June 3.
Sam van de Geer, an Oxfordshire County Council Museum Object Conservator who worked on putting the exhibition together, said: ?Delving in to the local history of hats and shoes has been a rewarding experience for everybody involved, particularly when working with the community groups and volunteers who have given up their time to assist with this project.
?The exhibition will show people how fashion influences us all in obvious and sometimes hidden ways.?
Councillor Judith Heathcoat, Oxfordshire County Council?s Cabinet Member for Safer and Stronger Communities, said: ?This exhibition is part of the fruit of some excellent collaborative work involving museums and collections from across Oxfordshire and it promises to be fascinating for all those who come to see it.?
The county council-run Oxfordshire Museum is open 10am-5pm, Tuesday to Saturday and from 2pm to 5pm on Sundays.