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Wising up to the owl
THE prolific owl is used in Leeds for one single reason – it appears on the city's coat of arms.
This is helped of course by the fact that it's a distinctive image, one which is easy to reproduce and, more inmportantly, a pleasant one.
Spare a thought then for neighbouring Halifax who have, as the centrepiece of their heraldic badge, the decapitated head of St John the Baptist, sometimes depicted with blood dripping from the severed neck.
But other cities around the UK have also been unfortunate. Many, like Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield, feature mythical creatures or lions, few of which old special meaning.
There's the odd exception. Some places, like Nottingham, have the image of the stag, but this is awkward to reproduce in any kind of sculptural form. While Glasgow's coat of arms incorporates two uninspiring fish, and unexotic Aberdeen the somewhat inappropriate leopard.
"We must be the only city which has such a perfect creature to represent it," said Clifford Stead, a man so enamoured with our symbol he's set up the Leeds Owl Trail with a handful of fellow devotees.
"If you were to commission a modern day PR company to name some kind of animal which was both unique and symbolic of a city then surely they couldn't come up with something better than an owl.
"It's easily recognised, easy to reproduce, and it's a bird which is incredibly well liked. It also has associations with wisdom, with power and is both beautiful and terrifying. It's a very clever, potent thing to represent a city if you think about it like that.
"Which is why, I think, people in Leeds are far more conscious of their civic symbol than anywhere else. I certainly knew it from an early age and I'm Leeds born and bred. It's on school uniforms, football kits, council buildings, it's everywhere."
In fact the owl appears in so many places that the Leeds Owl Trail conducts tours around the city centre showing parties just where they can find examples.
The array of locations is staggering. From bridges to churches, museums and railings, they appear in numerous locations in different forms – something few other cities can boast.
And since the Leeds Owl Trail website was set up members of the public have contributed dozens of pictures showing other examples of the Leeds owl. Interestingly, not all of the landmarks found were municipal, some were private endeavours showing that civic pride extended well beyond a handful of civic leaders.
Historians agree the owl originates from the 1626 coat of arms of the city's first Alderman, Sir John Savile, who was also MP for Yorkshire and later became a baron. But mystery still surrounds why he might have chosen this bird since it isn't even indigenous to the UK.
The European Eagle Owl is a giant beast usually found on the continent and, with a wingspan of over six feet, is among the biggest owls in the world. It can hunt small deer and foxes and would probably tear to shreds and devour a common-or-garden British barn owl.
But there's no evidence that European Eagle Owl even inhabited these shores in Sir John's day. So why would he have chosen them for his coat of arms and, unwittingly, as the symbol for Leeds?
Antonia Stowe is a sculptor and fellow organiser of the Leeds Owl Trail. She said: "We've asked the heraldic experts and the simple answer is that he may well have just liked them.
"People arbitrarily chose all kinds of creatures to go on their coat of arms and considering some had unicorns and sea horses, having an owl was a quite a conventional, almost subtle animal to choose.
"We've also concluded the Sir John might well have come across the bird on his travels and taken a shine to them, lots of people of his class in those days would also bring into the country stuffed birds."
Other theories endure. One is that the owl may well have been a thin joke, a comedic reference to the fact that he built and lived in Howley Hall in Batley. Either way, it's origins are of less importance to the city than the fact that, over the last two centuries, it has been embraced by Leeds.
Dr Kevin Grady of Leeds Civic Trust believes it took on greater meaning during the 19th Century, a time when most of the images of owls started to appear on some of the city's grandest buildings.
"This was the great age of municipal progress," he said. "And Leeds for years was seen as this great, expanding power base. Like the eagle, here was a symbolic, empirical bird of prey which could represent that.
"Sir Charles Wilson, head of Leeds City Council, talked about Leeds as eventually ruling over Yorkshire as some kind of capital stretching 'from the Pennines to the sea'."
Interestingly Wilson, also an alderman, was deeply concerned with the importance of the coat of arms, which actually carries three examples of the Leeds owl.
In fact he was so worried about the legality of the image that in 1920 he had it submitted to the College of Heralds to receive the official rubber stamp – a move which subsequent councils must have been deeply grateful to him for.
"Successive administrations have seen the value in the symbolism," said Dr Grady. "They've promoted it because of its associations and because it is so distinctive."
The Leeds Owl Trail team are now in the process of collaborating with students at Leeds Met who will, they hope, each focus on a specific landmark or building carrying the owl and research how it came to be there, who created it and why.
With the backing of Dr Grady and the rest of the Civic Trust they hope that the resulting answers may encourage more and more creators of new buildings to consider incorporating similar designs to resume the civic pride which blossomed in the last two centuries.
"I certainly think that's something to bear in mind when we're building for the future," said Dr Grady. "I think we should incorporate more owl art, carvings, sculpture, into new buildings of prominence.
"Surely all those notions of wisdom, beauty and strength are attributes we should also be reflecting in today's modern Leeds."
For more information visit www.leedsowltrail.co.uk
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Weather for Leeds
Thursday 24 May 2012
Today
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