Skate

This object is an ice skate, made from the leg bone of a cow or horse. The front has been cut to a taper, with a hole pierced through it to take a strap, and there is a hole in the back for a wooden peg. The bottom is flattened through wear on the ice. A skater would tie a pair of skates like these to their feet, with string or leather straps through the hole at the front and round the peg at the back. They would push themselves across the ice using a pole with an iron spike on it. William Fitz Stephen, writing in the 1170s, described how in winter crowds of young Londoners went skating on the frozen marshes of Moorfields north of the city: 'Others there are who fit to their feet the shinbones of beasts and with iron shod poles in their hands they strike ever and anon against the ice and are borne along as swift as a bird in flight.’ Skates like this were also used in Scandinavia, and the idea may have first been brought to England by Vikings.