They came, they saw, they wore socks with sandals

Tacitus (AD56-c.120) said the climate in Britain was "pretty foul, with frequent rain and fog but no extremes of cold".

Not cold? You can tell he had never marched sinister-dexter like Auden's soldier along Hadrian's Wall in December nor mounted guard as the snow fell on a bleak river crossing in County Durham.

If he had had direct experience of the filthy weather of the north of Britannia, he would have written more about socks. We know Roman soldiers wore them with their hobnailed sandal-boots and that long ago a squaddie shivering in Northumberland received a welcome package from wife or mum in sunny Italy.

"I have sent you ... pairs of socks from Sattua, two pairs of sandals and two pairs of underpants," said the message on a tablet found at Vindolanda on the Roman wall.

But thanks to a recent archaeological find which has excited men of a certain age from Whitley Bay to Whitstable it now seems that Roman chaps wore socks with unwarlike open-toe sandals, thus setting a fashion trend which continues to this day.

The evidence has been found on a razor handle, one of thousands of objects retrieved by divers from the River Tees at Piercebridge, near Darlington, which is the possible site of a Roman fort.

The handle is shaped like a human leg and foot and is prettier than your average plastic throwaway. "It looks as if the leg is wearing a woollen herringbone knitted sock," said Philippa Walton, a finds liaison officer at Newcastle University's Museum of Antiquities.

There have been previous hints of classical hosiery. "There was a bronze statue discovered in Southwark two years ago and it appears to show a foot wearing a sock," added Ms Walton. "But it is not as clearly shown as the sock on the new find."

She declared that the razor handle provides "unequivocal evidence that the Romans wore socks with open-toed sandals". Not just ankle socks; these go up to the knees like those of British officer in some sultry colonial outpost.

But who made them? Were Pompeii's matrons knitting as Vesuvius blew? Where are the Roman equivalents of Sirdar patterns?

Tacitus tacet.