The largest Roman shoe ever discovered, found in 2025 at the ancient fort of Magna on Hadrian’s Wall in northern England, will be going on display at the Vindolanda Trust’s Roman Army Museum in Brampton, Cumbria. It will be joined by some of the other large footwear unearthed at Magna Roman Fort at a new exhibition opening February 7th.
Magna was a smaller fort about seven miles west of the major fort of Vindolanda just south of Hadrian’s Wall. Unlike Vindolanda, which has been excavated regularly for decades, Magna has only been archaeologically excavated since 2023. Last summer’s excavation uncovered 34 shoes in a variety of sizes from children’s to adults. Eight of them were much bigger than average size, starting at 11.8 inches long. The largest of them was 12.8 inches long, the equivalent of a US men’s size 14. Michael Jordan wears a size 13.5, just to give you an idea of how huge these shoes are.
It’s a statistically significant proportion of shoes of unusual size. Almost 24% of the shoes discovered so far at Magna are extra large. Meanwhile, of the 5,000 shoes unearthed over 55 years of excavations at Vindolanda, only four or five of them are in the extra large category.
[Archaeologist Rachel Frame] said that while it was clear the leather shoes belonged to tall people, the mystery over why the individuals were stationed at the fort remained.
“We know that certain parts of the Roman world would have specialist regiments recruited into the army because they have a particular skillset – whether that’s in horse riding or archery,” she said.
“So potentially we’ve got a more specialist unit at the site [for whom] it was advantageous to be taller,” she said.
Archaeologists hope that when excavations resume in April, artifacts are unearthed that may explain this intriguing clodhopper cluster. For example, if altars dedicated to deities, funerary reliefs and inscriptions emerge that identify the legions stationed at the fort, it could clarify why they may have been recruited for above-average height.
Given the exposed nature of Magna, perhaps the troops were chosen because they were unlikely to be blown away in a high wind?
The height theory is maybe a reach. I wear a 13, I’m only 5 foot ten inches tall, my son-in-law has a size 14 shoe, he is under six foot tall. We are former American football players; we both weigh over the average male. I knew a man in school who wore a 16 shoe, an average size man. we did call him ‘boats’ because of his odd sized feet.
I would lean toward shoes that had extra room for insulation against the cold. The wall is not Games of Throne cold, but it is not a warm place in winter.
Apparently, Dutch soldiers at Magna with large feet that ran out of beer on behalf of Rome…
“…Cervesam commilitones non habunt quam rogo iubeas mitti” / “…The fellow sodiers have no beer anymore, and I kindly urge to send some” (Vindolanda tablet No. 628, Note by “Decurio Masc(u)lus to his prefect Flavius Cerealis in Vindolanda, Cohors VIIII Batavorum, ca. 97/105AD).
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PS: Myself (EUR45), I have 11UK and 12US. Thus, Americans seem to have smaller feet in comparison to the UK:
EUR / UK/ US Men
48 / 13/ 14
PS: Myself (EUR45), I have 11UK and 12US. Thus, Americans seem to have smaller feet in comparison to the UK: EUR / UK/ US Men 48 / 13/ 14
Ah, the Nigel Tufnel error: mistaking the higher value of a different scale as significant to the measured dimension. (“This one goes to 11.”)
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[fictional Heavy Metal guitarist] Tufnel is especially noted for his amplifier, which has numbering going “up to eleven!” 🤣️
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Or perhaps it was partially psychological warfare to intimidate potential enemies who might not have necessarily wanted to fight oversized legionnaries.