660 
OX HORSE-SHOES. 
large assembly congregated for the purpose of witnessing the 
renewing of the horse-shoe at the Horse-shoe Corner, Lan¬ 
caster, when the old shoe was taken up and a new one put 
down, with 1834 engraved on it. Those who assembled to 
witness the ceremony were entertained with nut-brown ale, 
&c.; afterwards they had a merry chairing, and then retired. 
In the evening they were again entertained with a good sub¬ 
stantial supper. This custom is supposed to have origi¬ 
nated at the time John o’Gaunt came into the town upon a 
noble charger, which lost its shoe at this place. The shoe 
was taken up and fixed in the middle of the street, and has 
ever since been replaced with a new one every seventh year, 
at the expense of the townsmen who reside near the place.” 
The most ancient horse-shoe found in this country appears 
to have left the frog of the hoof much more exposed than 
was done in later times; for after the middle of the four¬ 
teenth century the central opening of the shoe seems to have 
been made more contracted. An early example of this 
change is shown in a little specimen which was discovered 
in Fleet Ditch in 1847 (see fig. 4). The inner edge no 
longer presents the figure of a Norman arch, which seems to 
be the character of the older shoes, but that of the pointed 
arch of the fifteenth century, thus giving an increased 
covering to the hoof. This specimen is very thin, made 
without calkins, and is pierced with six square nail-holes. 
During a long period—almost to the sixteenth century— 
is was the fashion to secure the shoes to the hoofs of the 
horses with large-headed nails, generally of a square form, 
and of such a size that they are distinctly shown in several 
old illuminations. In excavating for the sewer in the Wal¬ 
worth Road, in 1825, the workmen discovered, at the depth 
of ten feet, some bones of a horse, and a large iron shoe (see 
fig. 5). The inner part of it is much like a Gothic arch of 
the thirteenth century in form.* 
It is pierced with seven or eight holes, in one of which a 
nail still remains, which is driven in as far as it will go; but 
the broad end is of such a size that it projects nearly three 
eighths of an inch from the surface of the shoe, in the way 
indicated in the figure of the horse upon which Henry VIII 
rides, given in a tournament roll in the Herald’s College, 
bearing date 151 l.j* 
* I may here state, that whenever I have compared the form of a shoe 
to a Gothic arch of a certain period, I do not mean to imply that it is of the 
same age, but only resembling it in figure. 
y An engraving of this figure is given in Dallaway’s c Inquiries into 
the Origin and Progress of the Science of Heraldry in England, 5 1793, 
p. 179. 
