Southampton's Coat Of Arms

Southampton's coat of arms.

Here are the arms of my home town:  three roses...  red and white...  hearty and unfussy.

Of course, the coat of arms is displayed here and there around the city.  I remember staring at the one on the wall of the scout hut, with a strange woman rising out of the top of a castle.  You can find several versions online (including this page of postcards and cigarette cards).  There are a few variations, chief of which is the ambiguity over which way round the red and white are, with the counter-charged roses.  I've seen a description that left the matter open, to the effect of "three roses on a shield that is half red and half white":  with three roses divided between two halves, you can go either way.

The official description, here at the council's website, is more specific, and blames a seventeenth-century herald for drawing it up wrong and causing confusion.  But is the figure on top a queen, or is she Lady Justice?

Recently it has been my turn to draw the coat of arms, on a Christmas card for the mayor.  In the past I've made a few experiments, such as this linocut for a border, showing the elements of the coat of arms - the roses, lions, ships-on-a-sea, castle-on-a-mound and the "quene in her splendour" holding a sword and scales - all processing out from the shield.

My linocut of the figures from Southampton's crest.

Drawing the whole crest involves working out the mantle (the fabric floating either side of the helmet) and getting the ships and lions right.  Having spent seven months in Venice, and possibly spent a total of seven months of my life looking at books on heraldry, I might have hoped to be better at drawing lions by now!  The final piece includes six in total - including the two that are smaller than a fruitfly, either side of the dome of the Royal Pier building.

The project took a few drafts and conversations, concerning what the mayor wanted and what I like drawing.  We ended up with an array of buildings around the crest.  I can't draw a bunch of local buildings without including Wyndham Court, and I was sad to have no space for the Harbour Lights cinema.  The quarter-jacks of Holyrood Church are a favourite; the Red Lion pub's half-timbering is fun to draw [an aside:  last night I enjoyed Jonathan Meades' 1998 programme on Worcestershire - here is his barrage of half-timbering].  Buoys and container ships are another essential element.

The bridges circling the coat of arms are the Itchen Bridge, Cobden Bridge and the old Redbridge.

Southampton!  The mayor's Christmas card for 2013.

To finish, here are two of the various old badges available for the London & South Western Railway Company, using (without permission!) the arms of London (top left), Southampton (bottom left), Portsmouth (bottom right), Winchester (centre right) and Salisbury (top right).

Now it's time to make my own Christmas card, and I must live with the niggling fear that I got something wrong in the crest.

ADDENDUM!
(two days later)

Alterations!

The High Court Of Chivalry

A heraldry update

In my recent post about the College Of Arms, I mentioned the most recent case heard by the Earl Marshal.

Well, yesterday, at the Beware Of The Leopard bookstall in Bristol's St Nicholas Market, I found a complete transcript of the hearing of The Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Citizens of Manchester, against The Manchester Palace Of Varieties Limited, in 1954.

Honestly, I'm not fascinated.  Nevertheless, it was a nice find.

I didn't leave without another nice little book on Heraldry.  This was a King Penguin (printed by the Curwen Press, which deserves its own post), from 1946, written by the Richmond Herald of the time, Anthony Wagner, with plenty of colour plates of arms, pedigrees and designs from the College Of Arms library.

Here are a couple of my drawings from Bristol Cathedral.

College Of Arms

Hold onto your heraldic hats - it's time for a celebration of chivalry.

Last week I visited the College of Arms, in London, on an evening tour organised by the V&A.  Heraldry and calligraphy have always appealed to me, and anyone working for the College of Arms has to take pleasure in the fine rules and colourful terms.  I spent many childhood hours poring over old and older books by people with double-barrelled names, and wondered what arcane heights of gilded tradition and scholarship might be inside the College, near to St. Paul's in London.

Because I love this subject, here I shall write up most of the notes that I made.  You can find out a whole lot more at the College Of Arms website.  Here goes!

We saw three of the many rooms:  the first is open to the public every day; the second is where any appointments take place; the third is never open, being the library and archive.  There is wood panelling, flags, portraits of past heralds, and emblems and models here and there, including an elephant, a blue kiwi holding a hammer, and a black turret with a golden lion holding a lit grenade - all too large to fit on top of any knight's helmet.  Oh, and a figure of Churchill in his full regalia.

The College is technically a remote part of the royal household and the chief position, Earl Marshal, has been the Duke of Norfolk for generations.  He is the Garter King of Arms, the most important of three Kings of Arms.  Below them are six heralds and four pursuivants.  (See details at the bottom of the post).  After over five hundred years, they are still granting arms, having come into existence to record and regulate use of heraldic identities; facilitate its use for tournaments and battle; and to organise the coronation.

All of the Officers deal with clients who want to buy a coat of arms (because they are available purely for money, and not linked at all with any title or honour); carry out research work and, very occasionally, get dressed up in tabards of the royal arms to take part in the state opening of parliament and the garter procession at Windsor.  There are apprentices, artists and scriveners, and the ultimate product, for anyone buying arms, is a vellum document ("letters patent), with seals attached, describing the design in detail.  It comes rolled up in a red box with royal monograms in gold.


The first room (the one that you can see at any time) is the Earl Marshal's Court (or the Court of Chivalry), where any disputes about use of arms would be heard.  This has only happened once in well over a century.  In 1953 a case began there (before adjourning to the Royal Courts of Justice), in which the Corporation of the City of Manchester objected to the use of its arms and seal by the Manchester Palace of Varieties theatre.  This a serious business and the design (or, technically, the description) of a coat of arms is absolutely the property of a corporation or individual and their direct descendants only.
[UPDATE:  a little more on this case in another post, The High Court Of Chivalry]

The library contains armorials, books of precedence and peerage, helmets and other artifacts, archives of grants, albums of symbols and family trees in books of all sizes, hundreds of years old; some with the paint still vivid on vellum.  In the Seventeenth Century, the heralds made "visitation" to each county, to make records of people who had been using coats of arms since before the rules were introduced.  Immediately after the Civil War, Gregory King, a herald and a draughtsman, used his travels to make documentary sketches of ecclesiastical architecture, in case of further destruction.

Helmets, letters patent and the red box, an armorial and some over-sized crests. 

Plenty of individuals and organisations still want a coat of arms, a crest, a motto and so on.  The College covers all of England and Wales and much of the Commonwealth (Scotland has its own heralds), and makes 150 to 200 grants each year (it was even more popular in the 1980s).  You can have any emblem, as long as it will look good - and look good in the future.  Although there is a hefty code of design, it doesn't work in the same way as corporate design documents:  your red will just be any red that can be called red.  As long as an artist is faithful to the long description of the shield, it will be correct.  The Officers steer clients towards a lasting design, but there is room for some playful references.  The College website has a gallery of recent grants with descriptions.


I feel like I've gorged on heraldry.  There is always more to read and always someone who knows more.  It's almost a bad habit.  I hope you get sucked in too.


The Officers of the College of Arms are as follows:

Pursuivants:  Blue Mantle, Rouge Dragon, Rouge Croix and Portcullis.

Heralds:  York, Richmond, Somerset, Windsor, Lancaster and Chester.

Provincial Kings of Arms:  North and South.

Garter King of Arms.