KINGSWOOD COLLEGE, Grahamstown.
The school’s coat of arms may be blazoned as:
Arms: Or, a wyvern gules; overall a chevron sable charged with five escallops argent.
Crest: Upon a wreath or and gules, a wyvern wing gules.
Motto: Studia hilaritate proveniunt.
It is unfortunate that this illustration was scanned from a printed version in which the gold was printed in bronze ink, which is quite unlike heraldic gold. Yellow would in fact be preferable, as in the coloured version of the shield shown here.
About the arms:
The arms were first registered with the Department of the Interior on 17 November 1941, under the Protection of Names, Uniforms and Badges Act of 1935.
This legislation allowed the registration of “badges” as submitted by the institution applying for registration, without their being subjected to heraldic scrutiny of any kind. It would be worth the school’s while to obtain a registration under the
Heraldry Act.
The wording of the blazon in the 1941 certificate refers to a phœnix, instead of a wyvern,
and a phœnix wing in the crest, instead of a wyvern wing. However, the
beast shown in the arms has always been a wyvern, or two-legged dragon.
The incorrect wording was corrected in 1966 in a document issued by the Department of Education, Arts and Science. In 1969 the records of the Bureau of Heraldry were adjusted to reflect a corrected illustration. However, this was still in terms of the 1935 Act, rather than the Heraldry Act of 1962. As of June 2000, the arms had not been registered under the Heraldry Act.
The school describes the shield shape as being “English” and contrasts it with the “Continental” shield of St Andrew’s College, but in fact Kingswood has a Tudor shield.
This shape is associated with the degenerate styles of heraldry that became prominent during the reigns of the Tudor monarchs, when coat-armour was no longer used in battle but became highly stylised in its tournament applications. The shield used by St Andrew’s is in fact the standard “heater” style of classic mediæval usage which is now generally acknowledged as being an ideal shape.
Three translations of the motto are used by the school. The first two read: “We carry out our studies with joy,” and “Through studies to joy.” The third, very free, translation, proposed by Dennis Butler, is: “We give it stick!”
The arms are derived at least in part from the arms of Kingswood School in Bath, in the English region of Avon (formerly the county of Somerset). Kingswood School, founded in 1748 under the auspices of the Methodist Church in England, has arms which incorporate 12 scallop shells and a wyvern crest.
Like the English school, Kingswood College (founded in 1894) is also a Methodist foundation. Scallops reportedly appear in the arms of the family of the brothers John and Charles Wesley, spiritual fathers of the Methodist Church.
The shell of the scallop (a marine bivalve mollusc of the family Pectinidæ, especially species of the genus Pecten) was widely used during the Middle Ages as a symbol of pilgrimage. It is especially associated with the shrine of Santiago (St James) at Compostela on the Atlantic coast of Galicia, in Spain, where these shells are plentiful. However, it was used generally as a pilgrim’s badge, being sewn into the pilgrim’s cloak or the upturned front of the brim of his wide-brimmed felt hat. A great many mediæval coats of arms incorporate scallops.
Scallop shells are also to be found in several other Grahamstown coats of arms, derived in that instance from the arms of Clan Graham. The occurrence of scallops in the arms of Kingswood is exceptional for the town, since there is no Graham connection whatever.
The word wyvern is used in English to describe the two-legged dragon, while dragon in English is normally a four-legged beast. (On the European Continent, words of the same derivation [draak, in Dutch, or Drache, in German] refer to the two-legged beast.
Further information about wyverns can be found here.
In addition to the coat of arms, Kingswood also makes use of a free-standing red wyvern as a heraldic badge, although it is not currently registered as such. The wyvern badge first came into use in 1975 with the establishment of the Wyvern Union, an association of parents and friends of the college who were ineligible for membership of the Old Kingswoodian Club. The illustration shows a carving in wood by David Hutton, of Port Elizabeth, which has pride of place in the Wyvern Clubhouse on the college campus.
The wyvern also appears in three different blazer badges worn by pupils: the standards badge (standing on a crest-wreath), the colours badge (within a golden wreath) and, as an honours badge, in a shield outline worked in gold thread. All three appear on a black background, and the shield outline is topped by the college crest.
It is strongly suggested that the school register the free-standing wyvern as a heraldic badge, since its use currently has no legal protection. The drawback of this situation is that members of the public might use it implying that they represent or have the approval of the school when in fact this is not the case. If the badge were to be registered, however, it would be possible to prosecute such abuses.
It should also be mentioned, however, that although the use of the red dragon on a black background is permissible when one is looking at a heraldic badge per se, placing the badge wyvern within a shield outline is irregular, partly because red and black are not held to contrast sufficiently in heraldic usage, and also because this implies the existence of a separate coat of arms with a black field.
Website:
The school website can be found here.
Afrikaanse blasoen:
Die skoolwapen kan in Afrikaans so geblasoeneer word:
Wapen: In goud, ’n draak van rooi; oor alles heen ’n keper van swart belaai met vyf mantelskulpe van silwer.
Leuse: Studia hilaritate proveniunt.
Die leuse vertaal as: “Ons studeer met vreugde” (of “Deur studies na vreugde”).
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Remarks, inquiries: Mike Oettle