The Duke of Wellington, Willingham
As the cold wind of a rather tacky and plasticky branding
refresh sweeps through the Greene King estate, the Duke of Wellington gets a
spanking new sign. Even though it’s not called the Wellington Arms, they’ve
gone for a nice heraldic job, being the arms of the eponymous Arthur
Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington:
It’s very full and detailed. And also looks pretty much
identical to the image
on Wikipedia, even down to the shading. I do hope no copyright has been
breached. . .
Burke’s Armory[1]
gives the blazon thus
Arms: Quarterly, 1st and 4th gules. a cross
argent between five plates in saltire in each quarter, for Wellesley;
2nd and 3rd, or, a lion rampant gules [armed and langued azure][2], for Colley;
and as an honourable, in chief an inescutcheon charged with the crosses of St
George, St Andrew, and St Patrick conjoined, being the union badge of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Crest: Out of a ducal coronet or, a demi-lion
rampant gules holding a forked pennon flowing to the sinister also gules
one-third per pale from the staff argent charged with the cross of St George.
Supporters: Two lions gules eacge gorged with an
Eastern crown and chained or.
Motto: Virtutis Fortuna Comes
The inescutcheon was awarded as an augmentation in honour of
Wellington’s military successes, especially his famous victory at Waterloo.[3]
Previously the sign bore this rather nice image of the man
himself, based on an 1818
portrait by Sir Thomas Laurence (albeit with a different colour background
and reversed, for some reason best known to the signpainter).
To my mind it seems a bit odd to use a depiction of
the arms on a sign if the pub isn’t itself called the So-and-so Arms, but it
could have been so
very much worse.
Refs:
[1] Burke, Sir Bernard, 1884, The General Armory of England, Ireland Scotland and Wales, p. 1089.
[2] Added, for completeness’ sake, from Brooke-Little, J.P., 1978. Boutell's Heraldry.
[3] Fox-Davies, A.C., 2007. A Complete Guide to Heraldry, p. 594.
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