ANIMALS

The village sign at Great Walsingham in Norfolk depicts a squirrel.  The inspiration for the design came from the family crest of the local Lords of the Manor, the Lee-Warners.  Two members of the family, Sir William Lee-Warner and his wife, have an impressive tomb in Little Walsingham Church.  The squirrel sits on the branches of an oak tree. An oak dating from 1692 still grows on the green in the centre of nearby Great Walsingham.  The design was that of Mr. Harrington of Little Walsingham and the sign itself was made by Harry Carter of Swaffham in Norfolk.

 

Below: Two badgers on the village sign at Browston.

Animals have been used as decorative motifs in East Anglia for many centuries, but early representations appear as rather ferocious creatures, as seen for example carved in stone on the outside of churches.  Then the idea seems to have been to scare away evil.  When benches were installed inside churches, more friendly-looking animals were carved on them.  Since then animals have appeared in all sorts of situations, but mostly on inn, pub and village signs and on weather vanes.  

 

The following pictures show examples of those animals that are least often represented.  See other pages for the more common ones.

A cat chases a mouse on this weather vane at a house at Roydon in Suffolk.

Of over five and a half hundred pubs listed in Yellow Pages for the Norwich area, none refers to squirrels or badgers.  Only two have names relating to cats, The Cat and Fiddle and The Fat Cat.  Both are in Norwich.  Just a few pubs have names relating to pigs.  The Blue Boar and Hog in Armour, both in Norwich, and The Boars in Wymondham are three I’ve found in Norfolk.  The Hog in Armour is a curious name that has puzzled many.  It has been suggested that the hog is actually a corruption of ‘hodge’, which is a name given to a peasant.  Perhaps the idea is that a hog dressed in armour is as ridiculous as a peasant dressed in finery.  Another unusual name is The Eels Foot Inn at Ormesby.

Motifs of squirrels can be found in East Harling Church in Norfolk.  The squirrel is a symbol of the Lovell family, who have been associated with the church at East Harling since having the manor here from the sixteenth century.

The village sign at South Lopham in Norfolk depicts a spider, strictly speaking not an insect but an arachnid.  It represents the great raft spider, a comparatively rare spider that can be found at nearby Redgrave and Lopham Fen.  Arachnids don’t appear in wayside art very often.  

AN INTRODUCTION

TO ANIMALS

TO  INTRODUCTION TO BUILDINGS

TO  MAIN INTRODUCTION

Insects don’t feature as motifs very often, but occasionally there are bees, which have had symbolic significance of various kinds throughout history.  Two pubs in Norwich are called ‘The Beehive’, and the Norwich School of Art and Design in St. George’s Street, has twenty bee motifs worked into a mosaic floor in the foyer.  For pictures and further information go to http://www.thejoyofshards.co.uk/mosaicsorguk/norwich/nsad.sh tml

Left: Weather vane with pig at Brockdish in Norfolk.

At Drayton there’s a pub called The Otter.

Below:  A house sign showing a hedgehog at Bridgham in Norfolk.