The museum of broken things

It wasn't until yesterday that I realised I hadn't walked along the riverbank since before the flooding. Perhaps that meant I hadn't fully come to terms with the scale of events, the power of the river and the effect on us all. It's been a tiring, stressful period and I think I needed to see the river again.

I love to collect. The act of beachcombing or mudlarking slows me down. It makes me focus. It makes my brain work at things in a very primative (in a good way) manner. I think there is something about the act of sorting and searching that helps me settle and regain my composure.

Yesterday I enjoyed findng the usual 19th century pottery fragments in and amongst the horrible 21st century filth, washed up on the riverbank. But the other thing I have previously observed in numbers are shoe and leather parts. Never before have I found a whole shoe though, which made me think I wonder how old these are? The sheer numbers suggest this is the rubbish from a cobblers. I know there was a tannery just upstream until around 1900/1908; I wonder if there was a leatherworker there too?

If anyone has any thoughts let me know.