Hundreds of mysterious old shoes wash up on beach during cleanup, baffling officials

Hundreds of old-fashioned shoes recently washed up on a beach in Wales - and locals are still trying to figure out why.

Volunteers working for the Beach Academy CIC, an educational center in Porthcawl, found the shoes on Dec. 18 during their efforts on a rock pool restoration project.

The team was trying to clear out litter to help restore rock pools to their natural state when they found the cache.

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Beach Academy founder Emma Lamport told Fox News Digital the shoes were found in a small area of Ogmore Beach, located in the Vale of Glamorgan, South Wales. 

About 200 shoes and soles were recovered, Lamport said, including men's, women's and children's footwear.

She outlined two theories about how they got there.

The strongest theory, she said, is that the shoes came from a 19th-century shipwreck called the Frolic, which struck nearby Tusker Rock. The ship was carrying cargo from Italy at the time.

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"They were washed up the Ogmore River estuary and, every now and then, they appear… especially when there has been erosion of the river bank," said Lamport.

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The second theory is that, back in the 1960s, a local factory produced over 50,000 pairs of boots and shoes each week - and cobblers would dump any old boots that they couldn't mend into the Ogmore River.

Despite the odd nature of the discovery, Lamport said that "it seems the find is not unusual."

"The well-preserved leather shoes, blackened over time, that have been found recently are not the first that have been found in the area," she said.

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"Locals have been relating stories of finding strange shoes along the South Wales coast."

Lamport also stressed that the age of the shoes has not been professionally verified yet, leaving the origin a mystery.

"Their future is also unknown," she said. 

The Beach Academy will hold onto the shoes for now, and is open to lending them to Cardiff University as educational artifacts in the future.