Pock 500 ed.4 - outer low - Pocklington School

PATRONS
We are delighted to announce that a
number of friends of Pocklington School
Foundation have kindly accepted the
Headmaster’s invitation to become a
patron.
The Honourable Mrs Susan Cunliffe-Lister,
Lord Lieutenant of East Yorkshire, was the
guest of honour at our prizegiving in 2009. She
was appointed High Sheriff in East Yorkshire in
2001, the first woman to hold this office since
its origin in Anglo Saxon times.
Professor Christopher Dobson is professor of
Chemical and Structural Biology at the University
of Cambridge, and has been Master of St John’s
College since 2007. The school’s foundation
charter is held in the college library and is a
testament to the long and active relationship
between school and college.
Mr Brian Fenwick-Smith is an OP,
entrepreneur and school benefactor. He has
assisted the school in ‘masterplanning’ recent
developments to the campus and his generosity
allowed the school to build a very fine and much
admired senior boys’ boarding house.
Fenwick-Smith House was opened in 2007.
The Right Honourable the Earl of Halifax is
a Governor of Pocklington School Foundation
and a Deputy Lord Lieutenant for East Yorkshire.
Lord Halifax is also High Steward of York Minster
and a J.P. Lord Halifax has been a close supporter
of the school over many years.
The Very Reverend Keith Jones, Dean of York.
In the early years of the school’s foundation the
Dean was one of the few individuals who could
discipline the Headmaster of Pocklington School!
In 2007 the school choir was invited by the
Minster to take part in its Wilberforce
celebrations and in the time ahead we
hope to strengthen the friendship.
We thank each of them for their support and
look forward to their involvement in our
celebrations.
Andrew Dawes
MAN. To show a dove above a man would be a
more satisfying rebus.
In a letter to the school in 1950, the Chester
Herald reported that “the original Grant of Arms
to John Dowman has been traced… The arms
are blazoned as follows: Azure a fesse dancette
between eight garbs or, banded gules, on the
fesse three doves of the field beaked and
membered.” That is a blue field with a gold
zigzag between eight gold wheat sheaves with
red bands round them. On the zigzag three
doves in their natural colours, with beaks and
feet.
THE FOUNDER’S COAT OF ARMS
The recent discovery of the school’s Foundation
Document of 1514 in St. John’s College Library
was an event of great significance for us. A
report of the document was given in the last
issue of ‘Pocklington 500’. The majority of the
text is in Latin, and this has been painstakingly
translated by two OPs, David Stather and Keith
Walls.
One intriguing aspect of the document is the
carefully ruled off blank square near the end.
Into this space at some point a coat of arms
has been drawn. The drawing is amateurish and
hurried – so very different from the beautiful
and assured script used throughout. In one
significant way the arms differ from the version
the school uses. But first it might be useful to
look at the arms we use today.
In 2007 the Somerset Herald wrote to the school
confirming the Dowman arms as ‘azure, a fess
dancetty between eight garbs or banded gules’.
This means a blue background to the shield with
gold zigzag across the middle and eight wheat
sheaves, four above the zigzag, four below, each
of them with a red band around it.
However, the arms in the Foundation Document
show three birds on the fess. These birds are
doves, and in the days before regularised
spelling, the family used a number of variants
for their name: Dowman, Dolman, Dowlman
and Doveman. It could be that this was the
version of the family arms created by our
Founder as his own.
Did he himself draw this sketch? If the coat of
arms had been granted to his father, or was
even earlier, was John Dowman seeking to
produce a difference in the customary way? The
space in the document certainly looks as though
it has been left for a coat of arms, but it has not
been professionally, or even competently, drawn.
The four garbs below the awkwardly drawn fess
are not spaced evenly as they are in all other
versions.
One intriguing detail is the smiley face added to
the left-hand side garb. Could this be Dowman
trying to create a rebus, that is a pictorial play on
his name - Dove - man? An account of the
school written in the nineteenth century says
that in the early 1800s there was a rebus on one
of the beams - below the three doves the letters
Almost the same information has come from an
early document seen by the school: Azure on a
fesse dancette between eight garbs or three
birds close of the field beaked and membered
gules. Crest on a bezant a bird as in the arms.
In addition, therefore, we learn that the birds’
feet and beaks were red, and that there was
also a crest - a bird on a gold coin. The latter is
certainly different from the crest shown on most
other examples of the family’s coat of arms.
In an attempt to sort out the school’s use of
the Dolman heraldry, Alan Heaven was asked
to examine the subject and produce a report.
He drew these three conclusions:
1. The arms which the school presently uses,
in various corrupted forms, are those of
the Dolman family.
2. The arms are not those of the founder,
John Dowman.
3. The school has been using arms to which
it has no right and has no grant of arms of
its own.
He added that “The closing line must be that the
school should petition for new arms”. The 500th
anniversary would seem to be a good time to do
so. There is, however, a cost to such an initiative,
and we have been advised it would be in the
region of £5,000. We will add this suggestion to
our wish list, a list we are soon going to need to
put in order of priority.
Copies of the full text of Alan Heaven’s
paper, ‘A Survey of the Heraldry of
Pocklington School’, can be obtained
on request.