Chester Heraldry Tour

Arms in Chester
"Arms" are dotted all over Chester and the local gentry seem at one time to have quite obsessed with them, possibly as a status symbol for "noble" ancestry. Randle Holme made a reasonable living as a "Herald Painter" researching and depicting the coats of arms of the Cheshire gentry and several examples of his work can still be seen today. Ormerod's famous history of Cheshire is actually very much simply a list of notable ancestry and therefore was almost a guaranteed best seller when first published. A careful look above the door of the Cathedral reveals two almost identical coats of arms - one for the unfortunate Arthur Tudor and the other for his brother Henry VIII: the difference is tiny. Inside the Cathedral the cloister Stained Glass, although it dates from around 1930, contains a wealth of heraldic puns. Somewhat dubious Welsh coats of arms are plastered across the front of the Grosvenor Club near the Eastgate. Many pubs have a "sign" which while helping the illiterate find them also have armorial connections - in Castle Street there are (or were) at least three pubs associated with the Roman legionary eagle. The Suspension Bridge over the Dee has the arms of the Earls of Chester - not without some heraldic blunders. The Grosvenors got embroiled in a famous dispute over heraldry which led them to change their original coat of arms to the current wheatsheaf, and led to a curious incident involving a racehorse and even a Sherlock Holmes story. This article is a brief tour of "Heraldic Chester" and some of the often quite odd stories behind the "coats of arms" around the City. There is much more heraldry on show than discussed below, so this article may be updated from time to time.

"Coats of Arms"
In England, from the time of the Norman conquest, official documents had to be sealed. Beginning in the twelfth century, seals assumed a distinctly heraldic character; a number of seals dating from between 1135 and 1155 appear to show the adoption of heraldic devices in England. The earliest seals often show nothing other than a mounted figure of a armed warrior usually charging forward with a sword. The figure may be carrying a shield, but often only the inside of the shield is shown, possibly indicating that there is nothing special about the outside face of the shield.

Heraldic designs came into general use among European nobility in the 12th century. Systematic, heritable heraldry had developed by the beginning of the 13th century. It is often claimed that the use of helmets with face guards during this period made it difficult to recognize one's commanders in the field when large armies gathered together for extended periods, necessitating the development of heraldry as a symbolic language, but there is little support for this view. For example, the earlier heraldic writers attributed the lions of England to William the Conqueror (as shown on the lodge in Grosvenor Park), but the earliest evidence of the association of lions with the English crown is a seal bearing two lions "passant", used by the future King John during the lifetime of his father, Henry II, who died in 1189. Many historic illustrations show "knights" wearing arms at very early times, when many of these arms were retrospectively assigned or "attributed" to the characters in question. The medieval mind did not seem to countenance a time when things had been different. For medieval people the world had always been much the same as it was then. So it is that medieval art invariably shows biblical characters in medieval dress, living in medieval houses and carrying on medieval trades. Some of the arms that these characters are associated with are clearly unlikely with one medoieval illustrator showing John the Baptist bearing arms which depict his own severed head.

Heraldry developed a rather formal code for what was allowed on arms. There are five trditional colours (red, blue, green, black and purple) and two "metals" (gold and silver) as well as two "furs", patterns which represent ermine and squirrel. A colour cannot be put on a colour or a metal on a metal - so a silver star on black is allowable, but not a red star on black. The main symbols on the arms (such as one or more lions) are called "charges". Initially, under the English tradition coats of arms were personal, but could be inherited. An heir might use the same arms while the owner was still alive but the arms would then have a mark of difference. Other descendants could modify the arms to show the family relation, but again would introduce a difference. If two people with arms married then the combined arms would be used, leading to some quite complex patterns. There are examples of all these features in the tour.

Market Square
The tour starts at Chester Town Hall, which is frequently open to the public (but on occasion not). There are many "coats of arms" on display, both within and without. Several examples of the official Arms of Chester can be seen on the lamp-posts outside. These combine the wheatsheaves of some of the Earls of Chester and the royal lions of England on the two halves of the shield. One can take this as representing the aquisition of the Earldom of Chester by the crown in around 1237. The arms appear to date from shortly before 1580, but are not the original arms of the city. When they were formalised in 1580, Elizabethan warfare was moving from the longbow to the era of pike and musket and the military use of the shield was almost extinct.

The inside of the Town Hall features much of the civic heraldry that the Victorians were quite obsessed with. The main example being the Stained Glass on the staircase. The arms of most of the Earls is visible with the exception being Gherbod the Fleming, who may not have been an actual "Earl" and is the only one not carrying a shield. Hugh of Avranches has a shield wich is turned away from the viewer but in many other places around the city is depicted using a wolf as his symbol. The wolf also appears at the base of the window. Whether he used this in real-life is questionable as one can argue that "Hugh Lupus" ("Hugh the Wolf") was a pejorative nick-name given by the Welsh which refers either to his invasions of Wales or his gluttony. As noted above, heraldry on shields was not common in Hugh's time (there is very little in the Bayeux tapestry) and many of the arms depicted may have been "attributed" much later and would not be recognised by the supposed holders. In this case they might even be considered an insult. Richard of Avranches is depicted at the Town Hall with a red shield showing a wolf and decorated with crosses. This is again depicting arms which he is unlikely to have actually used, but does illustrate how early arms were personal, with sons often having related arms with differences.

It is worth inspecting the shields of Ranulf de Meschines and Ranulph De Gernon which are the next in the sequence at the Town Hall. These dispense with the wolf emblem and instead us a lion. Richard had died in the wreck of the White Ship and de Meschines was an indirect inheritor of his title. His correct coat of arms is a red lion on gold, and the Town Hall gets it right although it is wrong elsewhere, as will be encountered later in the tour. De Meschines was Viscount of Bayeux, which town frequently used a golden lion on red in its heraldry - this may reflect the Norman origins of the "English" lion, but also illustrates again how arms were personal. De Gernon (the son of de Meschines) has a silver lion on red and is often considered a "serial turncoat" due to changing sides several times during the war known as "The Anarchy". The term "Turncoat" dates from the 1550's and is believed to be related to changing one's allegiance by reference to a coat of arms displayed, although whether it involved turning an actual coat inside-out or simply wearing a different badge is unclear.

The next earl is Hugh de Kevelioc and he uses a completely different coat of arms to his father, marking the emergence of the wheatsheaves: in this case six of them.

Co-op Bank

City Walls
Phoenix Tower

Esatgate and Watergate
St Peter

Bishop Lloyd's House

Leche House

Commonhall Street

Grosvenor Museum

(Military Museum)

(Chester Castle)

Randle Holme's house

Bridgegate

Suspension Bridge

St Johns

Newgate

Eastgate and the Grosvenor Club

St Werberg Street

Related Pages

 * Arms of Chester;
 * Stained Glass;

Online

 * Heraldry in the Bayeux Tapestry;