You actually couldn't make this story up...
In Leek, there are lots of brightly-coloured benches - all exhibiting a number of symbols of the town. The confusion is: what's the cockerel doing there? Although very prominent on these municipal benches, the rooster isn't thought to be a bird that is anything to do with the Staffordshire Moorlands.
The local paper was so perturbed by this anomaly that it set a reporter on the case, who reported back saying that it was... umm ... all a mistake! The bird should be a moorhen.
The original mistake, made in 1956, has never been corrected.
See : Leek's Heraldry ... mistake
Well, they're visually interesting, anyway!
ReplyDeleteIt isn’t actually a cock up. The “Cock is taken from the crest on the Leek Town Council’s Coat of Arms and really is an heraldic Moorcock. Heraldic beasts are quite different to their zoological cousins. I invite you t open any one of a number of heraldic dictionaries and you will find the following description:
ReplyDeleteThe Moorcock or Heathcock is curious, in as much as there are two distinct forms in which it is depicted. Neither of them is correct from the natural point of view, and they seem to be pretty well interchangeable from the heraldic point of view. The bird is always represented with the head and body of an ordinary cock, but sometimes it is given the wide flat tail of black game and sometimes a curious tail of two or more erect feathers at right angles to its body.
Members of Leek Town Council can sleep more soundly in their beds knowing that the armorial bearings of the Town of Leek are indeed properly depicted and the seats in question are “heraldically” correct.
Haha... I'm sure the councillors sleep better for this information, as you say.
DeleteI suppose the Leek Post was as confused as all of us that heraldry depicts a moorcock as a cockerel. Still, one doesn't go to heraldry for accurate depictions... (think Lion...)