696 
ON HORSE-SHOES. 
of the thin headed nails still remaining in the hole.* This 
interesting relic is now in the possession of Mr. Iliff, of 
Kensington, by whose permission I here exhibit it. It is 
exactly like, both in size and fabric, the Roman Solea ex¬ 
humed in Moorfields, and engraved in our journal (vi, 410); 
and Mr. Ainslie also places before us a precisely similar shoe, 
of rather large size, which was met with beneath a Roman 
road which passes by Inneravon, Linlithgowshire, where the 
old pavement was removed, and the road first macadamized. 
It is preserved in the collection of the Society of Antiquaries 
of Scotland. 
“The question regarding the employment of horse-shoes 
by the Teutonic tribes of Britain has received some slight 
elucidation. I feel confident that the Anglo-Saxons shod 
their steeds, and that they called the metal shoe calc-rond, 
i. e., rim-shoe; though Bosworth says the name signifies a 
round hoof; and my confidence is supported by the fact of 
the discovery of some horse-shoes in a Saxon burial place in 
Berkshire. Mr. T. Wills permits me to lay before you a 
horse-shoe, which there seems good reason to regard as of 
Saxon origin ; it is about three inches and seven eighths long, 
exceedingly thin, agreeing in this respect with a horse-shoe 
found with Saxon remains in Kent (alluded to in my former 
paper vi, 411), and the iron of which it is composed is of that 
peculiar ropy kind, so characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon era; 
it is sharp at the extremities, has no calkins, and the six large 
square nail-holes are cut clean through the substance, and 
not counter-sunk to receive the nail-heads, as in the Roman 
soleae. This curious specimen was recovered from the 
northern side of the Thames, about midway between Dow- 
gate and Blackfriars Bridge. 
“ I would now call attention to a shoe, differing from any 
we have hitherto considered, namely, an example of the kind 
known as a half moon. It is contrived to fit the outer half 
of the left fore hoof of the horse ; the intent being to prevent 
it cutting the opposite leg, which it would have done with 
the ordinary formed shoe. It is rather thin, has four square 
counter-sunk nail-holes, or stampings, but neither calkin nor 
fullering. 
“ This specimen was exhumed some years since from a 
considerable depth in Moorfields; it is certainly of an ancient 
fabric, though its exact age cannot be determined, nor do we 
indeed know when such shoes came into vogue; that they 
are as old as the seventeenth century is clear enough, for in 
* Some notices of the discoveries in Gloucester will be seen in the 
‘Journal,* x, 313. 
