By Jack Fifield
Locals have revealed a new theory after hundreds of “Victorian” shoes washed up on a Welsh beach – and say it’s been happening for years.
More than 200 shoes and soles were found by litter pickers working on Ogmore Beach on Dec. 18.
The primary theory had been that the shoes were lost in a one-off incident, when the Frolic steam packet sank in 1831 – killing 80 people.
However, residents have now said they have been finding strange shoes along the coast for years – with another theory being that cobblers at a nearby shoe company would dump old boots that couldn’t be mended into the river back in the 1960s.
Emma Lamport, founder of the Beach Academy, which found the shoes, said: “It seems the find is not unusual.
“The well-preserved leather shoes, blackened over time, that have been found recently are not the first that have been found in the area.
“Locals have been relating stories of finding strange shoes along the South Wales coast. Back in 2013, a large hoard of shoes was also found on the adjoining Newton Beach in Porthcawl of the same style and age.
“The age of the shoes has not been professionally verified and the dating not confirmed, it is only speculation.
“Their future is also unknown.
“For the time being they are being stored by Beach Academy and offers on what will happen next to the shoes include using them as educational artefacts at Cardiff University, as pieces of expressive art and turning them into clogs to be worn again.”
The shoes were removed as part of the Beach Academy’s ‘Rockpool Restoration’ project, which aims to restore rockpools to a nature state by removing litter.
The company has removed more than 12,000 items of litter from beaches – and Emma says they haven’t even ‘started to scratch the surface’.
Records show that around 80 people were lost when the Frolic steam packet was wrecked on Tusker Rock, with no survivors, on March 17, 1831, while on its way from Haverfordwest, in Wales, to Bristol.
Located just under two miles south-east of Ogmore in the Bristol Channel, and measuring less than 500m across, the rock is known as a ‘ship graveyard’.
Bodies are said to have washed ashore for months following the wreckage.
