Take a step back in time

A Saturday for new shoes. Then keep them for best. That's the way it was.

New shoes - there are still few pleasures to match their magic, and memories of being taken to a shoe shop as a young child are indelible rites, or even Start-rites, of passage: being intoxicated by the sight of brightly coloured boxes and the smell of new leather, while having your tootsies measured by an attractive lady in charge of an adjustable foot contraption.

It's one of life's Cinderella moments, when all the brand new shoes laid out on the racks finally find the right child to take them home and we all live happily ever after.

And at a time when Shropshire parents are hauling their children to the shoe shops for a new pair for school, a visit brings back recollections as vivid now as they were when the wearer was knee-high to a Peter and Jane height chart.

That's why most kids play shoe shops.

But for Barbara Preece, what she did as a child she does as an adult. Except that now, working behind the counter at Preece & Son footwear in Dawley, the shoe is on the other foot.

Now married to the current owner, William Preece, Barbara says some earliest memories are of being a little girl in the late 1940s and being brought here to the shop by her parents - invariably on a Saturday - for a pair that would have to last.

"I would come here to this shop and it was either black or brown, lace-ups or with a bar across," she remembers.

"All down one side was a wooden counter and the owner, Mr Preece, would be standing there behind it.

"He would just look at your feet and he would know what size you were - there were no feet measures. You would try them on and Mr Preece would ask you to walk around the shop in them and he'd feel across the foot."

Many thousands of children must have had similar experiences on the very same premises, since Preece & Son opened as shoe shop back in 1861 when Benjamin Moses Preece first opened its doors for business.

Remarkably, very little has changed to this day. Step inside and on the wall there there are still pictures of two Red Indians, the emblem of a now defunct moccasin brand.

"They used to be brass but somebody pinched them," says Barbara.

And there are still the same wood and glass cabinets filled with children's shoes, the same glass wall displays topped with boxes and boxes of fresh adult shoes, all waiting to be worn.

At Blunts in West Castle Street in Bridgnorth it's a similar scene. Boxes upon boxes of fresh Clarks shoes line the walls, like that's what the walls are made of - shoes.

There is even the same wooden fitting station - a built-in row of chairs and foot stools for children that is reminiscent of a shoe-shine counter.

Trying on a pair is five-year-old Luke Maybury-Bennett from Highley, watched over by his mum Kathryn and manager Jane Lowe, who invites the youngster to pop his right foot into the adjustable measuring contraption.

"I remember going to Beatties for shoes when I was a little girl and it was great," says Kathryn, 26. "I remember the lady taking my shoe off and measuring my foot in an electric thing - you put one of your feet in it and it closed around your foot.

"Coming here brings it all back. I also remember that I used to tidy up all the boxes in the shop, like I was playing shoe shops."

Assistant Rose Jones has early shoe memories too. She recalls how she would be taken to Hilton's in Newport, run by a Mr Smith, and upstairs to the children's department.

"The boxes were lined up along the wall like they are here," says Rose. "It was this sort of shop.

"I remember the Birthday shoes, T-bar sandals, and you would put your feet in an old-fashioned measure with a tape around it and have a walk round to see if they fitted."

She recalls Tuff shoes and Clarks' Commandos, the shoes for boys that ingeniously were fitted with a compass in the sole - just in case the young wearer got lost while in the woods pretending to be one of the Famous Five.

Today there are still shoes on the market with toys in their heels, and according to shop manager Jane the kids are crazy for them.

She takes out a pair and says: "They all want the ones with the dolls in the heels and they go out crying if they don't get them."

Back in Barbara Preece's day there was no choice.

She says: "I came into the shop, my parents chose the shoes and that was it. They used to have leather soles and my father used to repair them when they wore out, because in those days you could buy a piece of leather for the bottoms - he would take this piece of leather and nail or stud it on."

The shoes might have been more basic and less colourful back then, but make no mistake - the experience was still magic.

"It was very exciting - it was a new pair of shoes and you would feel quite posh when you went to school in them on a Monday," Barbara continues.

"They were precious because you only had one pair and you had to clean them every single night.

"It was always a Saturday when you had new shoes. Your father would get paid on a Friday and you would come in on Saturday morning and take them home ready for chapel on Sunday or school on Monday.

"You couldn't wear them straight away, you had to wear your old ones."