Huge 2,000-Year-Old Leather Shoe Unearthed Near Roman Fort: "Promising For Future Excavations"
A huge 2,000-year-old waterlogged leather shoe was unearthed by archaeologists while digging near the site of Magna, a Roman fort built along Hadrian's Wall around 112 AD. Hadrian's Wall was built to guard the wild north-west frontier of the Roman Empire. It stretched 73 miles from coast to coast.
The shoe, belonging to a Roman soldier with massive feet, was found at the bottom of an ankle-breaker ditch, a deep defensive trench designed to trap attackers if they got that far. The size of the leather sole measured 12.6 inches from toe to heel, equivalent to men's size UK 13.
The researchers found pottery and other smaller items, but three 2,000-year-old leather shoes, that were still intact, surprised them. The shoe will provide new data about manufacturing techniques and the people of that era.
The volunteers for the Magna Project wrote on the excavation blog, "It's always exciting to find anything that hasn't been touched for 2000 years but a shoe is such a personal item; it really puts you in touch with the people who used to live at the fort."
"This is really promising for our future excavations," Rachel Frame, a senior archaeologist for the dig project, wrote on the project's diary page.
The researchers said they have a plan to expand their dig to inside the fort to look for other items of archaeological importance.
The archaeologists who found it revealed that people were stunned after the discovery, as it "drew impressed gasps" when it was pulled from the ground.
Two shoes were discovered on May 21. As mentioned in Magna Dig Diary 2025, archaeologists revealed that the other one had all of its sole layers intact, along with part of the heel area still attached. Most of the hobnails were there in the outer sole.
"This gives us a really good look at how Roman shoes were made: multiple layers of leather were used to form the sole, held together with thongs, stitching and hobnails. These also reinforced the outer surface for walking and are found on many styles of shoe," Frame noted in the post.
"Sadly, the toe area is missing meaning that we can only estimate its original size, but it was still clear this would have been a large shoe when complete," Frame added.
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