Thursday, November 17, 2022

Some More Methodist Heraldry in Cambridge


In another part of the city from the Wesley Methodist Church, I ran across some more Methodist heraldry at the Wesley House which is, as its website notes, "a reflective, cross-cultural community of prayer and study in Cambridge for students and scholars in the Wesleyan tradition."

As you walk down Jesus Lane in Cambridge, the House is hard to miss:


As I said, hard to miss!

And, of course, it displays its coat of arms very prominently in front:


The arms are blazoned Gules a cross between four escallops or on a chief sable an open book argent bound and clasped or.

The color of the shield and the cross and escallop shells in the arms here harken back to the Wesley arms we looked in the last post.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the black chief on a red field. On the one hand, it violates one of the most basic guidelines for heraldry, that of not placing a color (here, black) upon a color (red). On the other hand, it remains pretty identifiable, and so almost works.

Nevertheless, it's "heraldry in the wild", and for that reason alone worth sharing with you.

No comments:

Post a Comment