Month: February 2025

Identifying Ancient Horseshoes—Guildhall Horseshoes of ancient Britain

I have been collecting horseshoes all of my life, and have a decent amount from Great Britain. The shoes from this area are much easier to date for me, as there is more written documentation about shoeing practices, much more research has been done, and I have a couple of excellent research books on them. One of the books that I have found is ‘Old Horseshoes’ by Ivan G. Sparks.

This is a great book! It is small but filled with good information!

Another excellent book is ‘The Medieval Horse and its Equipment’ by the Museum of London. The Editor, John Clark, categorizes the different types of shoes a little differently than Ivan Sparks, but gives them roughly the same time periods. Today I am going to focus on the Guildhall shoe (according to Ivan Sparks) or Type 4 (according to John Clark).

Another great source is the Museum of London’s website. They have many photos of medieval shoes and their approximate dates. I often quiz myself on trying to date them according to what I have read in books, and use their shoes to help identify some of my own more puzzling examples.

The Guildhall shoe, according to Ivan Sparks, has a rounded outer edge and an arched inner edge. This shoe is a good example:

These shoes gained popularity around 1350 AD to accommodate the larger breeds of horses being imported to the area. They gradually were replaced by keyhole shoes by around the 1600’s. According to John Clark, they were often found in the 14-15th centuries (around 13-1400’s).

They tended to have just one calkin, but they had two as well. They sometimes had 6 nailholes, and sometimes 7 (3 on one side and 4 on the other). The shoes are fairly small, maybe about the size of today’s average riding horse. Certainly not as large as today’s drafts!

Below are some samples from my own collection. They have been cleaned so I can more easily identify the number of nailholes, special features, etc.

As you can see, these shoes are fairly small.
This shoe is quite thick and heavy! I left a rusty patina on it, but they are all coated with clear Rustoleum paint to stop further rusting.
Another photo of the shoe above, to show just how thick it is!
I believe this is a later shoe, possibly getting a little closer to the keyhole variety. It is a bit larger than the others, and the squared off heel on the right seems to remind me of the keyhole heels.
This shoe has a great angular inner profile! It is a bit larger than the others. It also has a lot of damage to the right side.
This shoe is also a bit larger. Notice how the heels are getting a bit of an angular cut to them? I think it is getting closer to the age of the keyhole shoe. It still has its angular inner edge, though. I like to think of it as being on the verge of change.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if these shoes could talk? To hear all of the stories of the horses that once were, what their lives were like, and all that occurred in the hundreds of years that these shoes were under ground!