wat is a shoemaker journeyman??

[Rena]

to the best of my knowledge no one outside Bond Street in London has the knowledge to make boots or shoes.

James.

Not quite true James.  Until about a couple of decades or so ago, Accrington & Rossendale College, Lancashire, used to teach shoemaking from design to the finished article and at the end of each year the students would exhibit their wares to the public walking along a catwalk modelling the shoes they'd made, usually colourful high heeled leather ones, which obviously needed a knowledge of engineering. At the time there were several shoemaking concerns in the Rossendale Valley (Lancashire).   When government policy changed to providing more academic subjects, the tutor moved to another town, opened up his own premises and carried on teaching the skills needed to make shoes.

I'd like to share another memory with you.  I'm from a large seaport in east Yorkshire. Back in the 1940s onwards I used to see a man sitting all day long in an ordinary bay windowed terrace house. He was a shoemaker sitting cross legged in his front window handmaking shoes.  My brother-in-law was an upwardly mobile person and back in the 1970s he commissioned the shoemaker to make his shoes at a cost of an eye watering £60.00 per pair. 

[Maiden Stone]

Re Rena reply #18. One of the towns in the Rossendale Valley is aptly called Waterfoot. 

[Forfarian]

Back in the day, the trade guilds would not permit a newly-qualified apprentice shoemaker (for example) to set himself up as a master-shoemaker & employ other men. He had to undertake his "Wanderjahre!" as a "Journeyman" & set off to gain experience by working for other masters!

I don't think there was any actual obligation to go very far afield, though many young journeymen did indeed take the opportunity to see a bit of the world.

If the master with whom he served his apprentice wanted to take him on as a journeyman, there was nothing to prevent this. But he did have to work as a journeyman for several years before being accepted as a master and allowed to train apprentices of his own.

[Rena]

Re Rena reply #18. One of the towns in the Rossendale Valley is aptly called Waterfoot. 

 

Used to chauffeur my old man through it once a week to take him too and from Bacup   He was quite capable of driving himself there - but it was the thought of him driving back after a drink that I worried about 

[KerrConner]

Kerrs in my family were also Master Shoemakers/Journeymen