Positive or negative?

Affleck Arms, Dalham

Dalham Hall, which overlooks the picturesque little Suffolk village of Dalham, was for many years the home of the Afflecks, raised to the baronetcy (and therefore entitled to arms) in 1782. The family appears to have originated in Scotland, and the line, as well as the baronetcy, seems to have died out in the 1930s, in ignominy and in Australia.

According to the village’s website, the Elizabethan pub, which was one of the first buildings in the vilage to be erected (they had their priorities right in those days!), was named in honour of Lieutenant General Sir James Affleck (1759–1833), 3rd baronet, who was Colonel of the 16th Dragoons. (It’s an excellent pub, well worth an excursion.)

So, unlike some pubs I have mentioned previously, and others besides, here we have a pub named after the correct armigerous family. Full marks so far. The sign is a nice heraldic one, too.

But, is it correct? Well, the style – the double scroll especially – makes me think of one of those dreadfully misleading ‘your family crest’ sites, but I can’t find anything online that it could have been taken from. So hopes are high.

From various sources[1], we can write the complete blazon for the Dalham Afflecks as follows: 

Arms: Argent three bars sable

Crest: An ear of wheat proper

Motto: Pretiosum Quod Utile

This means that the shield should be white with three black stripes. This is what we see in the funeral monument of John Affleck (d. 1718), the first of the Dalham Afflecks, impaled with (presumably) the arms of his wife, Neeltje (née Schape, of Amsterdam).

Have another look at the sign:

Count the lines. Oops! That’s black with three white stripes (sable, three bars argent) – the negative, those of a photographic bent might think, of what it should be. Perhaps the artist was given as a brief, not the clear and specific heraldic description, but the ambiguous instruction ‘seven horizontal black and white stripes’. Explicable, but still very disappointing and easily avoidable.

The same generosity cannot be extended to the crest, however.

Looks nothing like a heraldic ear of corn. (And while I’m at it, the mantling and torse ought to be the same colours as the shield, i.e. black and white, not red and white.)

The motto is at least correct – although English heraldry prefers it to be placed below, not above, and of course giving the name as well is superfluous.

So, it’s a perfectly attractive and detailed sign, no careless daub, but let down by a couple of easily avoided errors. My hopes were high, but I ended up more disappointed than delighted.

Note

[1] The British Herald: Or Cabinet of Armorial Bearings of theNobility and Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland gives the arms as:

Ar. three bars sa.

Crest: an ear of rye ppr.

Encyclopaedia Heraldica gives only the crest, “an ear (or fleck) of rye ppr”.

The Heraldry Institute’s site give the arms (in French), and provides the motto as:

“D'argent à trois fasces de sable Cimier un épi de froment au naturel Devise PRETIOSUM QUOD UTILE”

Arms and the (wrong) earl

Clarendon Arms, Clarendon Street, Cambridge

This is another pub to ‘benefit’ from Greene King’s latest brand refresh. I have already written about the previous sign, which (correctly) displayed the arms of the Villiers family, earls of Clarendon (2nd creation).

As I noted before, this is an appropriate choice of image because 4th Earl, George Villiers, was not only a distinguished contemporary politician and diplomat, but a Cambridge man, to boot!

Come the refresh, though, it seems that these arms weren’t picturesque or fancy enough, so they went in search of something else, finding instead the arms of the Hoyles, earls of Clarendon (1st creation).

This earldom has been  extinct since 1753 (long before the pub was built) and, after the future 1st earl, Edward Hyde,  was rejected as undergraduate by Magdalen (as the spelling then was) and ended up at Magdalene in the Other Place, they have had no connection whatsoever to do with either the pub or indeed Cambridge as a whole.

And what detailed heraldic research has gone into representing this blazon? Why, search the internet and nick something, of course! (Compare the lettering on the scroll and the 'drop shadow' on the ineschutcheon and the chevrons: this is clearly a reuse of the same image. I did wonder why I could never get it to look sharp in a photograph; now I know.) St George’s Chapel, Windsor, eh? I wonder if anyone at GK read the copyright notice:

“No image or text displayed on this site may be used without the express permission of the owner. Such permission should be sought in the first instance in writing from the Dean & Canons of Windsor, via the Chapter Clerk, who will contact the owner of any photography in question.”

Arms and the Duke

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.

Arms and the Coronet

Crown and Castle, Warwick

Lots of interesting detail in this one. We’ll start at the back, with the ‘castle’ part. The tower is Guy’s Tower, part of Warwick Castle, completed in 1395. The smaller, slit windows are original, but the larger ones at the top date from 1642, during the English Civil War, when they were widened to allow cannons to be fired from the tower. So, a small anachronism, there.

Now the ‘crown’. The headgear that this chap is sporting may look like a crown to the layman, but in fact it’s a coronet, specifically the coronet of an earl (without its cap of maintenance), which in heraldry (and here) comprises eight strawberry leaves (four visible) and eight silver balls (five visible).

This is just one clue to the identity of the fearsome-looking chap who dominates the sign. He is an earl, and probably a local one. The second, and perhaps more prominent clue, is the shield, which bears the arms of Neville (gules a saltire argent) differenced by a label of three points compony (or gobony) argent and azure. This, then, must be Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, known to history as ‘the Kingmaker’, the differencing being in honour of his Lancastrian/Beaufort descent via his paternal grandmother, Joan Beaufort. And indeed these arms appear in the 3rd quarter of Richard Neville’s full achievement.

It seems such a shame, then, that having got the heraldry more or less right, the sword and armour are hopelessly anachronistic, belonging more to the late 12th century/early 13th century than the mid-15th. In fact the sword looks remarkably similar this modern replica, with 12th-century blade style and 13th-century crossguard.

Update:
When I returned in April 2015 I found the pub converted to a hotel, and the previous decent-ish sign replaced with this rubbish one:

Berks’ heraldry

The Kingston Arms, Kingston Street, Cambridge

I’m sure most people have encountered those business that peddle items emblazoned with ‘your family coat of arms’, determined purely by surname, not by any genealogical research. With the Court of Chivalry no longer sitting, this can be regarded as a harmless bit of fun, appealing to the gullible and the heraldically ignorant (online ones particularly aimed at the American market, it seems, about which I make no further comment) – but on no account should they or their dubious claims be taken seriously.

The Kingston Arms currently has this on its signboard.

When I first saw it, I was puzzled. ‘What has the Duchy of Brabant to do with this pub?’ I wondered. But a little searching reveals that it’s nothing to do with the Low Countries at all: a number of these ‘family heraldry’ companies offer this as the coat of arms belonging to the surname Kingston. No pedigree, no genealogy, just the shield: sable a lion rampant or.

But does it have anything to do with the pub?

Of course not! It took a little intelligent digging (more than went into the selection of this device for the pub, obviously), but I finally found out that the Kingston family entitled to bear these arms were lords of one of the manors of Kingston Bagpuize in far-away Berkshire (Oxfordshire since 1974). The line became extinct in 1515 and the manor was sold out of the family in 1545. Well, at least there’s no one alive to challenge the appropriation of their arms.

The Kingston from whom the street and the pub take their respective names was in fact one Thomas Kingston, known locally as ‘Miser’ Kingston, who owned houses in nearby Sleaford Street. He wore shabby clothes, had a long beard, and frightened children, apparently. He also had a reputation for watering the farm workers’ beer, which is not really the sort of reputation that a self-respecting pub would want to associate itself with, but there you go.

He was not, however, an armiger, so the very name of the pub is a bit fake to start with, a fakery which the present sign compounds.

References

Gray, R., and D. Stubbings, Cambridge Street-names: Their origins and associations. CUP 2000

Any Port(land) in a storm

The Portland Arms, Chesterton Road, Cambridge

These are the arms of the Cavendish-Bentinck family, dukes of Portland. The blazon is given by Nottinghamshire History as follows (with some tweaks by me) : 

ARMS: Quarterly 1st and 4th, azure, a cross moline argent, for BENTINCK; 2nd and 3rd, sable*, three stags' heads caboshed argent, attired or**, a crescent for difference***, for CAVENDISH.

CRESTS: 1. Out of ducal coronet gold, two arms counter-embowed, vested gules, on the hands gloves or, each holding an ostrich feather argent****, for BENTINCK. 2. On a wreath argent and sable, a snake nowed proper*****, for CAVENDISH.

SUPPORTERS: Two lions double queued, the dexter or the sinister sable.

MOTTO: Craignez honte (Fear shame)

* Purpure in this representation, for some reason.

** Not here.

*** Missing in this version.

**** Looks more like a Morris dancer’s handkerchief to me

***** Here argent. Doesn't look much like a snake, either, so maybe the artist didn't quite know what it was meant to be.

The present neo-Georgian building, designed by Basil Oliver, dates from the 1930s, although there has been a pub of that name on this site since at least 1852. That would correspond with the 4th Duke of Portland:, though why he should be honoured with a pub in Cambridge is anyone’s guess. It may be older, and go back to the 3rd Duke , who enjoyed an illustrious political career and is a more likely candidate.

The Dukedom became extinct in 1990.

Arms and the queen

The Alexandra Arms, Gwydir Street, Cambridge

One of Greene King’s better efforts, this, showing that they can come up with something attractive and accurate if they try.

These are the Arms of Alexandra Carolina Marie Charlotte Louise Julia, Princess of Denmark, Queen Consort to Edward VII and Empress of India. As Queen Consort (later Queen Dowager/Queen Mother) rather than Queen Regnant, her Arms are the Royal Arms of the United Kingdom impaled with the Arms of her father, King Christian IX of Denmark, which are the Danish Royal Arms of 1819–1903 – hence the woodwose acting as the sinister supporter. (The tale of the complexity of the Danish Royal Arms is a saga in itself.)

The pub predates her husband’s accession in 1901, but has been known as the Alexandra Arms since at least 1879 (Post Office Directory), by which time Alexandra was already proving a popular Princess of Wales.