Cordwainer

The Cordwainer’s Craft is at the very top of the scale and would require apprenticeship and journeywork for eventual membership of a Guild - it’s most distressing to be referred to as a cobbler! (After all, some still use the insulting expression ‘cobbled together’ to mean a substandard job…)

Cordwainers work with new materials to produce new goods - cutting pattern pieces, assembling then turning and finishing fine footwear; sometimes also manufacturing other complex leather commissions.

A cobbler is just a mender of old shoes, boots and other goods (though occasionally permitted to refashion footwear or reuse sound leather parts) The reasons for the expression that ‘the cobbler’s children go ill shod’ are not only the irony that he repairs other people’s shoes but also that he is probably too poor to afford them.  Cobblers are usually shown as poverty stricken - while not above slyly stepping on the toes of their betters in filtching shoemaking work.

Work undertaken at Farnham Castle International Conference Centre closely follows the construction method of the 17th century shoes on permanent display there.

(These were found alongside ointment pots so were probably buried quite deliberately in an elaborate charm against witchcraft...)