A Tale of Two Seals: The Halifax Civic Coat of Arms

Readers with an interest in Halifax will probably be aware that the official Coat of Arms for the town has the head of John the Baptist on it. More keen eyed readers, or at least readers who find themselves waiting around in the Town Hall on a regular basis and who have a wandering attention span, may be aware there are many mosaics on the floor in the main gallery depicting the Coat of Arms. Have you noticed that the head in the centre of the floor differs from the heads that run around the edges of the room? The one in the middle of the floor, which is the more modern design, lacks two things that the smaller ones have – namely, some words in Anglo Saxon script and some small drops of blood below the neck. If you’ve ever wondered why, then read on…

West gate door of Piece Hall.

The smaller Arms are the town’s original Coat of Arms design which has been in use since 1848. It was commissioned by the Town Council in order to commemorate Incorporation, as it had been the law since 1835 that any town which was granted Incorporation status was entitled to submit a civic Coat of Arms design to the College of Arms so that they would have an official seal with what was called “armourial bearings” – all the elements of a Coat of Arms which we’re familiar with, depicting various figures, specific colours, “chargers” (beings supporting the shield at either side) and so forth. The designer, Francis Leyland Jr., was a local antiquarian who was asked to put together a submission that reflected the various heraldic shields of medieval families in the area as well as the history of Halifax itself. The original design was his attempt to tell the story of Halifax’s development:

Azure, diapered or; the face of St. John the Baptist proper, with nimbus and four guttees dropping from the neck, all of the second. In chief the word ‘Haleg’ and in base ‘Fax’, in Anglo-Saxon characters or; a canton chequy or and azure. Crest: a lamb passant argent; bearing a banner charged with the arms of the Priory of Lewes.” (Bretton, 1948)

Unless you have more than the vaguest understanding of heraldic language this is probably incomprehensible, so in layman’s terms; a blue and gold-chequered shield with St. John’s head on it, featuring a halo and four drops of blood dripping from his neck. In the shield in gold letters is “Haleg” and Fax”, which reflects the etymology of the name Halifax – “holy hair” in Anglo-Saxon, referring to an origin story for the town’s name involving a martyred virgin’s decapitated head being thrown into a yew tree and hanging there by her hair; a later origin story involves a local hermitage which possessed the head of John the Baptist and posits the “fax” to actually be a Scottish dialect rendering of “face”. This second story is clearly the one which was used to design the seal. There are garlands around the shield in blue and gold, and a silver lamb is reclining at the top of the Arms. The lamb represents the wool trade and the economic boom that it brought to Halifax which sped up its growth. The banner has (supposedly; this apparently is perhaps a little bit of a stretch, according to Bretton) the arms of the Priory of Lewes, which was the home of the Earl de Warrennes, the nobleman who was granted ownership of the Manor of Wakefield by William the Conqueror. This was finished off by the town motto beneath the Arms which reads “Except the Lord keep the city”, a plea to God to protect the city, the full quote being “except the Lord keep the city, the watchman watchest in vain”. All in all it seemed to be the perfect design for the town, and with only some grumbling by the councillors over the cost of designing and submitting it, it was agreed and duly passed to the College of Arms for approval.

This is where things began to go wrong.

Original design as seen on the floor of Halifax Town Hall.

Rowland Bretton, the author of an article in the Transactions of the Halifax Antiquarians Society and the designer of the modern Coat of Arms, describes the cursory rejection of the Town Council’s submission on two grounds. One is purely technical, in that in heraldry everything within a coat of arms is meant to be symbolic. This means, in short, that you cannot use text in your design. The words Haleg and Fax therefore made the design invalid and unapprovable and had to be removed. This came from the Garter King of Arms himself so was not something which could be argued against. The second reason might seem today to be, quite frankly, pure snobbery. Bretton writes that:

“The Heralds’ College declared the head of John the Baptist to be too holy an object to be employed in the design of a common seal; and that as Halifax had derived its importance from such matter-of-fact sources as trade and commerce, it was better to adopt an entirely different design, indicating the true origin of the town’s prosperity”.

In other words – you’re too common to have a saint on your Arms! Religious figures were not permitted, on the whole, on familial Coats of Arms but were very common on civic ones. It wasn’t unreasonable of Leyland or the Council to assume that, given the importance of this saint in the origin of the town’s name, that it was entirely appropriate. But the College disagreed, to the point where they offered the Town Council an alternative design! The Town Council, understandably, said “no way” and an impasse was quickly reached. Despite repeated warnings over the years that the use of an unregistered seal and Arms was illegal, subsequent Town Councils and other builders and architects gleefully and (maybe even spitefully) continued to use the design everywhere they could. That’s why you can see the original seal on the doors of the Piece Hall, repainted as part of the restoration with Haleg Fax clearly visible. It was also cheerfully (recklessly!) used in the border of the floor of the Town Hall when it was opened in 1868, further showing the town’s resolve to continue using the seal as their official symbol. Borough Council minutes throughout this time frame refer to the original seal as the “Corporate Common Seal of the Borough” in what is presumably their way around the matter of whether the seal was truly a civic Coat of Arms or only a seal.

Commemorative leaflet for the opening of the Town Hall – the seal on the lower left hand side has Haleg Fax printed on it, just visible.

Over time, clearly, the lack of authorised Arms must have begun to weigh on local lawmakers, and in 1947 the Town Council decided to update the design both to commemorate the centenary of Incorporation and to finally gain official heraldic approval of their town seal. Step forward Mr. Bretton, another local historian who felt that the original design could be honoured without further irritating the College of Arms. Now, we have the new design, the one which is featured in the centre of the floor in the Town Hall. The words Haleg Fax are gone, as is the blood. Ultimately though the blood droplets are a red herring (no pun intended) as to why the official Coat of Arms is different from the original and why the original might have not been approved…it wasn’t the blood, it was the words and the humble origins of the town’s wealth which set the College of Arms against the design. The removal of the blood appears to have been a purely aesthetic choice on Bretton’s part.

New design on the floor of Halifax Town Hall – due to ongoing work on the roof this is the closest I could get. Note the loss of the words and blood.

(note: this post was inspired by a query put to me while on a visit to the Thornton Antiquarian Society in February by a member there, who had heard something about this topic years ago and thought that while he had me there he should ask – I had no answer but said I would get back to him. This is why you should never be afraid to ask a librarian a question. We might not know the answer immediately, but we will find out, and we might even enjoy ourselves while we’re doing so.)