Two Halves of Padlocks and a Padlock Slide Key, from Oxford: 13th century

Although these three things did not go together originally - the two halves of different padlocks were excavated in St Ebbe’s, and the key found in Oxford and bought by a collector - together they illustrate how people in Oxford locked up their possessions in Medieval times.

Locks were probably the only mechanical objects ordinary citizens of Oxford would have owned. Some Medieval padlocks have twenty or thirty separate components, although many were undoubtedly intended to appear more complicated than they really were, to impress the locksmith's customer. Internally the padlocks had a spring-strip mechanism, two or more long strips beings pressed together as the mechanism was pushed into the case, then springing open inside and jamming until pressed together again from the opposite end by the slide-key.