Tag Archives: Universities

Articles detailing my visits and applications to various higher education institutions, and then my experience attending one.

The Use of Academic Dress in Heraldry

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This was a virtual lecture put on by The Heraldry Society. It was presented by Duncan Sutherland, with an introduction by David Phillips, the latter being actually present this time. Sutherland said that he was connecting from Albania. When he started researching heraldry he came across academic dress a few times and managed to record about twenty examples.

Academic gowns in corporate arms usually reference the founder of the organisation. Academic robes date to the middle ages when most if not all students were there to train for the holy orders. The medieval university tunic was the forerunner of both the academic robe and the clerical cassock. Hoods were included because at the time they were common across all classes. When they fell out of general usage they were supplanted with skullcaps, which then evolved into a wide variety of specialised hats.

British academic styles reflected the influences of the Reformation, Republican and Restoration periods.

Sutherland then went through his examples, both personal and corporate. I have looked up free-licence images and the textual blazons wherever I can.

The Earls of Aberdeen

Dexter an Earl  and sinister a Doctor of Laws both habited in their robes Proper.

The earliest known grant of supporters to include academic robes was to the 1st Earl in 1683, with both dressed as doctors. The 4th Earl swapped them for the Hamilton antelopes. The 7th Earl was granted the present supporters. He was later elevated to Marquess but the dexter supporter was not changed to match.

William Thompson, 1st Baron Kelvin (g.1892)

On the dexter side a student of the University of Glasgow habited holding in his dexter hand a marine voltmeter all Proper. On the sinister side a sailor habited holding in the dexter hand a coil the rope passing through the sinister, and suspended therefrom a sinker of a sounding machine also all Proper.

Kelvin was the first British scientist to be elevated to the House of Lords. He served as Professor of Natural Philosophy at Glasgow for fifty-three years and was an important contributor to the Transatlantic Telegraph Project. His supporters were granted by the College of Arms in 1892 but the arms themselves had been granted by the Lyon Court.

Leonard Courtney, 1st Baron Courtney of Penwith (g.1906)

On either side a doctor of civil law of the University of Cambridge, vested in his robes, the dexter holding in his right hand an open book, the sinister in the right hand a pen, in the left hand a scroll all Proper.

Courtney was Second Wrangler at St John’s College, Cambridge.

Alfred Mond, 1st Baron Melchett (g.1928)

Dexter a Doctor of Science of the University of Oxford holding in the exterior hand a chemical measure glass sinister a labourer holding in the exterior hand a pick resting on the shoulder all Proper.

Melchett’s arms were granted in 1910 and revised in 1928. He studied at St John’s College, Cambridge and later was Chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries.

Sir Alfred Keogh

Keogh was Director-General of the Army Medical Services. His supporters were a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse and a doctor in gown.

John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes (g.1944)

Keynes was a scholar at both Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge. (CA Ms Grants 107/253)

Archibald Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell (g.1944)

Dexter a soldier of the Black Watch in field service uniform supporting with his exterior hand a rifle sinister a Scholar of Winchester College in his gown holding in his exterior hand a closed book all Proper.

Wavell was himself a scholar of Winchester College. He had his first army commission in the Black Watch in 1901. He was Colonel of the Regiment from 1946 to 1950.

He had protracted correspondence with Garter over the correct illustration of the academic dress. They are displayed at Winchester Cathedral.

Alfred Webb-Johnson, 1st Baron Webb-Johnson (g.1948)

I cannot find a blazon for them, but Sutherland said they were displayed in the King’s Chapel of the Savoy as well as the Fitzrovia Chapel.

Jack Simon, Baron Simon of Glaisdale (g.1977)

Dexter a man habited in the robes of a Doctor of Civil Law in the University of Cambridge Proper and holding in his dexter hand a book Or sinister a man habited in the robes of the President of the Probate Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court Proper. (Debrett’s 2003, P1476)

Simon was President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division from 1962 to 1971. He studied at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, before his call to the bar.

Stewart Sutherland, Baron Sutherland of Houndwood (g.2004)

Dexter a male figure in the attire of the Vice-Chancellor of Edinburgh University sinister a male figure in the attire of an honorary graduate of Aberdeen University and wearing the hat appropriate to an honorary doctor of the University of Uppsala.

Sutherland was himself Vice-Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh. He also had a Master of Arts degree from Aberdeen and an honorary doctorate from Uppsala, both in theology.

Jocelyne Roy-Vienneau (g.2015)

In this case the academic references are in the crest rather than the supporters.

Two blue jays each holding in its beak a sprig of balsam fir and standing on a bed of daylilies and purple violets Proper.

The Public Register explains the symbolism: The mortar and diploma symbolize Ms. Roy Vienneau’s career in post-secondary education, particularly as assistant deputy minister with New Brunswick’s Department of Education and as dean, department head, professor, manager and director general of the community college in Bathurst. They also symbolize her husband’s career as a teacher in public schools.

Worshipful Company of Framwork Knitters (g. 1933)

On the dexter side a student of the University of Cambridge in academical costume of the seventeenth century Proper and on the sinister side a female figure also in seventeenth century costume habited Azure cuffs cap neckerchief and apron Argent holding in the dexter hand a knitting needle Proper and in the sinister hand a piece of worsted knit Gules.

Worshipful Company of Scientific Instrument Makers (g.1956)

On the dexter side a figure representing Michael Faraday habited in a festal gown of a Doctor of Civil Law of the University of Oxford and holding in the exterior hand a representation of his coil Proper and on the sinister side a figure representing Sir Isaac Newton habited in a gown of a Master of Arts of the University of Cambridge and holding in the exterior hand his telescope also Proper.

Royal College of Anaesthetists (g.1991)

The supporters are representations of John Snow and Joseph Thomas Clover.

Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (g.1999)

Blazon missing.

University of Ballarat (g.1997)

I can’t find the blazon for this one.

New College, University of Edinburgh (g.2021)

Two human figures representing diversity one dressed in the academic gown and hood of a Master of Divinity and one dressed in the academic gown and hood of a Master of Arts (Religious Studies) both from the University of Edinburgh all Proper.

Liverpool John Mores University (g.1989)

Dexter a peregrine falcon and sinister a raven each statant on a doctoral hat upon a compartment comprising a grassy mount all Proper.

Worshipful Company of Educators (g.2014)

On the dexter a dragon wings elevated and addorsed Argent holding in the dexter foreclaws an abacus Azure the beads Gules and on the sinister a barn owl wings elevated and addorsed proper the wings charged with an escallop Azure charged with two swords in saltire proper hilts and pommels Or and holding in the beak by the tail a mouse Sable each statant upon a book Or bound Gules.

University College of Cape Breton (g.1995)

Here again the reference is in the crest.

Rising from a wreath of mayflowers Proper a Canterbury cap Gules.

Art Deco – Building Style of the 1920s and ’30s

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Rachael Unsworth in profile

For my first virtual lecture of 2025 I joined Leeds City Walking Tours, though obviously on this occasion I walked very little.

The presentation was by author and geographer Dr Rachael Unsworth, and it focused on the Art Deco architectural style of the interbellum period.

Art Deco was dubbed some some as the most glamorous style of the 20th century. It stood in stark contrast to the misery and gloom of the First World War. It had its antecendents in both the Beaux Arts and Bauhaus movements – the latter, Unsworth notes, has proven extremely influential on other artistic and architectural movements ever since despite not being very long-lived in its own right.

The Art Deco movement is traditionally traced back to the 1925 Paris Exposition, though the actual term “Art Deco” is a retronym not properly established until the 1960s. It overlapped with Modernism and was notable for sticking to some of the established rules of the preceding Classical period (especially regarding the overall shape of a building) while radically changing its ideas about materials and ornamentation. The decorative flourishes of this fashion focused on bold geometric shapes and the Greek Key symbol (of which Unsworth pointed out a few examples). It also saw the widespread adoption of Portland Stone, steel frames, reinforced concrete, “Crittal windows”, chrome fittings, vitrolite and fluorescent lights.

Dr Unsworth listed some of the “architectural lynchpins” of Art Deco – Charles Reilly, Robert Atkinson, Thomas S. Tait, Howard Morley Robinson – then some rapid-fire examples of the Art Deco buildings themselves. As you would expect from the name of her organisation, these were mostly focused on Leeds.

Particular attention was given to the university, where she brought up the anecdote of the Parkinson Building which was faced with Portland Stone at the front but ordinary brick at the lesser-seen back, because the latter was 4% cheaper. There were also some examples closer to (my) home, such as the Dorothy Perkins building in central Hull.

Unsworth closed out by noting the paradox of Art Deco – it was used as a component of national identity in some countries but stood for internationalism in others. It also stood for peace and democracy at the same time as standing for the power of dictatorships. The League of Nations headquarters in Geneva had the same aesthetics as the Reich Chancellery in Berlin.

She had hinted at the start of the lecture that this topic had particular salience at the moment. I had no idea what she meant.

FURTHER READING

Art Deco style is popular again, a century after its heyday – Associated Press

Honour in the Eyes of Others

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The Oxford University Heraldry Society’s May lecture was given by Vicky Fletcher. It was a study of pseudo-heraldic shield motifs in historic church graffiti and medieval personal seals. She began by confessing that she was not a heraldic expert, and so “heraldic” was here used in a broader than usual sense.

The idea of chivalric knighthood was significant in the late middle ages. Heraldry was a free-for-all until Richard III gave a charter to the College of Arms in 1484. Large amounts of land became available during the reign of Edward III due to, among other factors, population disruption from plague and famine. Labourers could demand higher wages and much arable land was converted to pastoral. New landowners used heraldry to bolster their social status. This was the age of the burgeoning “middling sort”.

Her in-depth study was of All Saints Church in Worlington, Suffolk. The parish church was the centre of medieval life, although the new rich were also prone to establishing private chapels. All Saints Church would be one of the first buildings encountered by people who arrived from the river. Fletcher had looked in depth at the many motifs carved into the church’s walls but decided to confine herself to those which were shield-shaped. There were an estimated 390 inscriptions were found in the church, of which around 10% were heraldic in nature.

Heraldic graffiti was mainly clustered around four of six piers in the south arcade. Motifs do not cut across each other and defacement is rare, though a lot of it would have been whitewashed during the Reformation and then clumsily scraped off by the Victorians. The most common motifs were the bend, the chevron and the quarter (which in Fletcher’s terms included crosses and saltires).

There are many prominent examples of the arms of Jerusalem, probably used by returning pilgrims. Peasant rebels in Richard II’s time used the arms of St George. Heraldic symbols were widely used by merchants. There were also “personal seals” used by individuals in a private capacity. Peasants who rose in status might want to disguise their low ancestry to escape the notice of their former masters (and thus avoid having to pay tax to them).

A link to the full paper can be found here.

The Audley Beast with David Phillips

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Thomas’s daughter Margaret, painted in 1562, with the beast in the background.

After a long-ish break – the January lecture failing due to technical glitches – I returned to the Oxford University Heraldry Society for a lecture about the Tudor era nobleman Thomas Audley, 1st Baron Audley of Walden, and the mysterious animal that features as his heraldic supporter.

At the end of the lecture I asked a question that had been intriguing me for a while – why, in the early Tudor period, was there such an explosion of historically-prominent senior officials with the first name Thomas?

Phillips gave the answer that, prior to the reformation, Thomas Becket was one of England’s most venerated saints and so of course a high proportion named their sons after him. That just left me with the new question of why there weren’t so many Thomases in high office between Henry II and Henry VII’s reigns, but I didn’t get time to ask that one.

On an unrelated note, today marks the tenth anniversary of my registration as a Wikipedia editor. In terms of edit count rankings, I have climbed to number 5452. There was no grand celebration – not even an automated reminder – but I did discover a Ten Year Society to join, albeit one with little activity thus far.

A Grand Total

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It is not entirely easy to count how many heraldic illustrations I have made for Wikimedia Commons over the years. Do I count badges separately from shields? Do I include achievements I’ve made twice? What about ones that have been deleted?

When I finished updating my gallery at the end of July the shields and lozenges collectively numbered nine-hundred and sixty-six. Over the course of August I have illustrated at least another thirty-four.

My official one thousandth coat of arms is that of the Barons Darebury, a relatively short and low-profile line of peers whose distinctions include High Sheriff of Cheshire and Chairman of Aintree Racecourse.

Having cleared this benchmark, I move onto the next project. Last year I unveiled my armorial of universities in the United Kingdom. This year I have made a similar list for the universities in Canada. This one has so far progressed much more rapidly, as Canadian heraldry is very easily searchable in the Public Register of Arms, Flags and Badges, in contrast to British heraldry which often involves a great deal of searching around for clues. The register had blazons for fifty-four fully-fledged universities, as well as twenty-nine subsidiary colleges or faculties and four related voluntary bodies.

The items in this list are organised by province, though they are not evenly spread – forty of the eighty-seven institutions are in Ontario, with the University of Toronto alone having fifteen distinct grants. Newfoundland & Labrador and Prince Edward Island, by contrast, boast only one each. Another strange trend is that Canada’s heralds seem to have been inordinately fond of sealing their letters patent on the fifteenth and twentieth days of the month.

I am struck by one major problem – although I have quickly compiled many dozens of blazons I can find illustrations for only two of them. On the actual pages of these institutions one can frequently find an image of the coat of arms copied directly from either the register or the university’s own website, claimed under fair use. Such a justification does not fly on pages such as the one I am making, so I will have to call on the aid of all Wikimedia’s great armorial artists to fill the gaps.

Pictures in Unexpected Places (Part 2)

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Last year I made a post looking at some of the ways in which my free-licence photographs were being used online. Since then a couple more examples have turned up:

This article in The Boar uses my photograph of the laundry room at The Lawns Centre to head an article about the student union at Warwick changing their laundry contractor. Interestingly the image clearly shows signage with Hull branding on it. The article says “Card or credits will not be required to use their service, which will reportedly also handle potential machine breakdowns with quicker response times.“, which is of great interest to me, as I found the laundry facilities at The Lawns to be insufficient, overcomplicated, unreliable. After the first fortnight I opted to put my worn clothes into a travel bag and haul them to Rex Launderette just under a mile away.

The UK Human Rights Blog credited me for a photograph of Lord Sumption. I merely uploaded the screenshot to Wikimedia Commons, the video was actually produced by the Cambridge Law Faculty.

The Arms of the Universities

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Almost a year ago I embarked on a draft Wikipedia page listing the armorial ensigns of Britain’s many higher education institutions. I spent about a month on it before moving onto other projects, returning only a few months later to keep up a token level of activity so that the draft wouldn’t be deleted. In March, having decided that I had done enough by myself, I left guidelines on the talk page for other contributors and then stood back. Three days ago, without much ceremony, I discovered that another editor had taken up the mantle and, after further enlarging the page’s content, launched it into mainspace.

Unlike those of humans, arms of institutions are not recorded in Burke’s and Debrett’s. Luckily for us, the great heraldic scholar Arthur Charles Fox-Davies recorded the arms of a great many universities (and other organisations) in The Book of Public Arms in 1915. Of course, a lot of new universities have come into being since then, and I do not know of any similar book – or at least none in the public domain – published in the present millennium. I did, however, find a smattering of more recent arms on Heraldry of the World, a private Wiki set up solely to record impersonal heraldry, although that site’s own sources are unfortunately not listed. Many establishments have details about their armorial achievements on their own websites, though the level of precision is far from consistent.

The ancient universities and their constituent colleges often assumed arms in a time before heraldry was regulated, and subsequently had them recorded during the Tudor-era visitations. Later institutions matriculated from the College of Arms and the Lyon Court in the usual way. One interesting phenomenon to note is that the older institutions are mostly restricted to a mere freestanding shield, whereas the newer ones sport crests and supporters. The proliferation of such ornaments into corporate heraldry is a relatively new phenomenon, with heralds consenting to granting them only after realising that institutions would otherwise assume them anyway. Paradoxically, this means that new universities who seek grants of arms in order to approach the prestige of old ones may actually be sabotaging their own objectives by displaying them.

There was some difficulty in arranging categories, as not all universities have neccessarily always been universities – some started off as constituent colleges of others but later broke away, others evolved from more specific bodies such as teacher training colleges or medical schools. Arms could be matriculated at any stage, and possibly but not definitely carried forward through reconstitutions. Then there was the issue of how to list schools in Ireland which were part of the United Kingdom when their armorial grants were first issued.

My next list page, which I began on 10th March, is for the arms of who have held the office of Lord High Chancellors of Great Britain. Hopefully it won’t take a whole year to get that one approved.

UPDATE (August 2021)

Edward Teather, a Medium blogger, has written a graphic design critique of British academic heraldry.

Pictures in Unexpected Places (Part 1)

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Last week I and many other students received notice that The Lawns, that leafy undergraduate hamlet in the large village of Cottingham, would cease to offer accommodation in the next academic year. At some point I ought probably to make a post discussing this issue in more detail, but for now what piques my interest is the article which appeared in The Tab three days ago. The third photograph is of the balcony on the upper floor of the Lawns Centre, which I took in October 2017, about a month after moving into Ferens Hall, and subsequently uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. This got me wondering where else my images may have turned up.

Snooping around, I found this blog post by Beyond Nuclear International, which laments the recent death of Paul Flynn MP. Nearly two years ago I attempted to make a Wikipedia article listing all current members of the House of Commons in order of seniority. I eventually abandoned the project when I discovered that such a page existed already. Unlike the article just referenced, mine would have included the free-licence portraits of those members which had recently been published. The late Mr Flynn was not included in the new gallery, nor did there appear to be any other photographs of him that were available under the terms necessary for Wikipedia. After searching fruitlessly for a few days, I decided to fill the empty table cell with a cartoon image which I constructed using the shape tools on Libre Office. The fabricated portrait was never used on any real articles, so I rather expected it to languish in permanent obscurity. The use of my crude caricature on BNI’s sombre blog post is especially perplexing given that the page already features two photographs of the departed, the first a publicity shot courtesy of the CND and the second a screencap of parliamentary footage dubiously credited to Flickr-ite Ninian Reid.

Curiously there are to be found at least two photographs for which I am credited even though I did not take them: an editorial in The Oxford Student and a newsletter by the Shropshire Patients Group. In both cases the images were screenshots from short educational films which were released on the UK Parliament YouTube Channel in late 2012. In these cases it seems most likely that the creators of these articles found me listed on the file pages as the user who uploaded the images, and mistook that to mean that I had been the one who took those photographs in the first place. One dreads to consider what this says about the reading comprehension skills of the people of the people who produce these websites, and can only hope that the rest of their content is more carefully considered!

UPDATE (June 2020)

Fifteen months on I have produced a sequel.

UPDATE (May 2023)

It seems that the article in The Tab has been deleted, as the link now just goes to their homepage. I did, however, find this one from the BBC using another of my photographs for the same story.

Course Representative Training

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It’s that time of year again!

As the academic year 2018-19 got into swing (which, at university, can take a rather long time), in came the emails about recruiting course representatives. Naturally I went forward. There has been a slight reform of the role – or at least the nomenclature – this year, as School Representatives are given the more accurate designation of Subject Representatives.

There were also a few changes to the training experience: The session, held on the ground floor of the library, was led by education coordinator Benedict Greenwood and president of education Isobell Hall. We were taken through a slideshow about our responsibilities and told to contribute suggestions through Mentimeter. Also included were two videos: one tailor-made for the union, the other a generic motivational sketch which I am sure has been played at thousands of corporate training sessions before.

Later on we were divided into smaller groups and asked to discuss what we thought our main challenges would be, along with ways to overcome them. Unsurprisingly, this prompted a flurry of complaints about inconvenient timetables.

Today’s training was markedly different to that which I had a year ago. On the one hand I was disappointing by the lack of a refreshment table this time, for I had not brought any lunch. One the upside, I now have a badge to advertise my representative status, which somehow never came to me in my first year.