Figure 1.--Quite a few prep schools made sandals a part of the everyday uniform. This continued even when other British boys were no longer wearing them as commonly as they once did. |
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Some HBC readers recall wearing school sandals as boys. Here are some of the accounts. Some boys can not recall much about them. Others have very definite memories. There are many other references to school sandals in our personal experiences pages. As HBC develops we will try to cross reference them here.
One English boy describes his memories of wearing school sandals, "The sandals were mum's idea but were very common in the 1950's. All my clothes were mum's idea. In those days boys had no say in what they put on and in any case there was not much choice. Clarks shoes is a very old family
firm in England and were, and still are, famous for good quality children's shoes. Their name was synonymous with traditional school shoes. Another famous name in England is Startright. The sandals were brown leather with a single strap across the foot passing through one in the middle to form a "T". The strap buckled on the outside of the foot. The foot was enclosed except for the gaps between the straps and the small holes made covering the foot to allow air to circulate. The backs were enclosed and the soles made of a light coloured composite material called crepe (If that is how it was spelt). These sandals were worn by most children in the summer. The boys' ones were always brown as I remember. Girls had the same but theirs were usually of other colours. Many boys wore sandals like this for as long as they stayed in shorts and they were approved of at my grammar school in the summer term only. The woodwork master
though used to forbid them as they were considered dangerous in case one dropped a chisel on your foot. I preferred anyway to wear black lace up shoes to school. I used to think long socks with sandals looked odd."
Paul remembers that almost all of the boys in his junior (elementary) school wore closed sandals. Gradually during the 1960s, however, sandals increasingly became associated with younger boys and their popularity declined considerably in the 1970s.
I can just about remember wearing blue t bar sandles before I went to school with white socks. Between 5 and 10 1/2 I wore brown t bar sandles with grey socks and short trousers. I probably wore this as part of my school uniform. I can also remember some other boys in my class wearing similar footwear and clothing. However I do remember one boy when I was seven wearing the blue t bars with grey trousers. I think nearly all boys wore short trousers till they were 10 or 11 years old at school. Another boy sometimes wore white
socks with brown sandles. I attended a state infant and primary school in Engalnd between 1969 and 1975.
Thought I'd give you my experiences on this subject. I've already explained to HBC (in talking about Germany) how I loved my sandals as a kid
and wore them for as long as my mum would let me – well into the Autumn. Most kids in contrast couldn't wait to get back into “proper shoes”. There was no school rules on when sandals could be worn--it was just when mum's decided and most kids did at my primary school in the Summer. We boys still had to wear our long socks with sandals for school even though girls could wear short socks. I preferred this for some reason. I hated it when my mum made me wear short socks out of school.
Our prep school in the 1980s insisted on school sandals. The school was alright, although they were rather stricy aout the uniform. We had blazers and caps which we wore with grey short trousers and turn-over-top socks. I didn't care for the sandals. Other boys had the same opinion. We had to buy a certain style with the narrow straps. I wouldn't have minded the style that looked more like a shoe. I began school at age 8 and at then didn't think too much about it. But by the time I was 11 didn't want to wear them any more. When we dressed up for church on Sunday we wore lace up shoes and sometimes trainers for games, but normally we only wore sandals.
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