Village Emblem

When asked to look into the design of a shield or emblem for the village I looked at what might be a common theme for the village, nothing at first sprang to mind, then I thought of things like the Trysting tree, the church or even the Red Lion Hotel. Then I thought the tree had been missing for some years (the original that is), the church but then everywhere has a church and the Red Lion is not what it used to be. I then thought to myself there is a lot of history within the village, it is mentioned in the Doomsday Book it has had quite a number of historic landowners so I decided to research their heraldry to see if a unique emblem could be made from theirs.

Below you can see the finished product, the top left hand quadrant depicts the red stripe and Marlet (a type of heraldic Bird) from the De Furnival family who held the manoral rights to the village in the mid 1200’s. The top right quadrant has been made using the yellow cross with blue quadrants of the Osborne family and the black ermines of the Osborne and De Mortain family, Sir Edward Wasteneys, sold Todwick to Thomas Osborne, the first Duke of Leeds, in 1677 and the Count of Mortain, half brother of William the Conqueror was given the village in 1086. The lower left quadrant has been made of the De Wasteney family, the Rampant Lion of the Wasteney family was predominantly a burnt orange colour. By 1303 Sir Edmund Wasteneys was holding Todwick from Thomas Furnival. The Wasteney family continued to live in the family into the 20th century. The lower right quadrant I placed the shield of St Peter & St Paul to honour the village church. In 1379 the village society was headed by William de Saint Paul who took his name from that of the church.

Designed by Richard Rattenbury