Description

Safety shoes (size 7) with leather uppers and beech (?) soles with horseshoe shaped irons screwed onto the soles. Worn by road workers when laying tarmacadam and bitumen-macadam, the shoes have wooden soles to provide insulation from the heat of the material being laid.

The shoes were apparently referred to as “clogs” by staff at the time of donation to the museum by Lothian Regional Council’s Direct Labour Organisation (DLO). The shoes had reportedly been in the DLO store for many years and had likely been purchased by the previous local authority (The Corporation of the City of Edinburgh).

The letters on the sole (“BGS”) could refer to the BGS Shoe Corporation which was registered in 1941 in Manchester, New Hampshire, USA.