By historian Roger Bingham of Ackenthwaite:

CLOGS were the wooden-soled footwear worn by country people from mediaeval to modern times.

Even mid-twentieth century school photos show pupils wearing them.

In 1970, during a tug of war contest on a drizzly day in Milnthorpe, one lad "fetched his granddad’s clogs to give him a chance of a better purchase on the clarty village green."

Everyday school photos in the 1940s show girls as well as boys wearing clogs, while the Milnthorpe clogger, Roland Shap, produced children’s clogs out of scraps of coloured leather.

Clog sliding was a popular antic on a winter’s morning, especially if they were shod with iron ‘caulkers’ which could ignite sparks from the frosty ground.

A stuffing of straw boosted the insulation provided by coarsely knitted woollen stockings. The heels could be preserved by smearing the stockings when wet with melted pitch, followed by being dipped in pitch and with a rubbing in ashes from a turf fire. The glutinous mixture produced a compound both hard and flexible which resisted the friction of both wool and leather.