Patrick Comerford
The Elephant and Castle is a very dominant part of the coat-of-arms of one branch of the Beaumont family, and so it became a major feature in the heraldic decoration of the ceiling of the long gallery illustrating the Comberford family tree in the Moat House on Lichfield Street, Tamworth.
I was first shown this ceiling and its heraldic decorations when I was a teenager. It has fascinated me ever since, and I have been back to see it many times over the past 55 years or more.
There is no simple explanation of why or how the Wednesbury branch of the Beaumont family adopted the elephant and castle as one of their heraldic symbols. But I was reminded of it last week on the buses through Elephant and Castle in London last week, on my way between Waterloo Station and Brockley, visiting Comerford Road.
Elephant and Castle is a neighbourhood just south of the River Thames, in the London Borough of Southwark. A transport hub, it is a familiar landmark and home to thousands of people, and it is also an area in transition. A major regeneration programme is underway, with over £4 billion of public and private money being invested in the area.
Elephant and Castle is the name of a short road, but the name is generally used to refer informally to much of Walworth and Newington. The area has a rich cultural history, has two local universities, a flourishing arts scene and a strong Latin American influence. The origins of the area are found in its location at the meeting point of several major routes into the heart of London.
To this day, it is one of the city’s most important transport hubs. It has two underground stations, a mainline rail station, 28 bus routes, and excellent road and cycling connections.
The area was once known as the ‘Piccadilly of the South’ – a central hub of entertainment that regularly drew in thousands of Londoners. With plans for new theatres, cinemas, shops, restaurants and places to socialise, Elephant and Castle is once again becoming a destination for visitors, as well as a great neighbourhood in which to live, work and learn.
Today, Elephant and Castle is a fast-changing area with modern developments like the Strata tower, nicknamed the ‘Razor’, High Point London South Bank University, the LCC Tower and a variety of cafés and places to eat.
But how did Elephant and Castle get its unusual name?
There are many explanations, but none seems to satisfy my curiosity.
No-one questions that the name Elephant and Castle is taken from the name of a pub or coaching inn at this major crossroad. The earliest surviving record of this name in relation to this area appears in the Court Leet Book of the Manor of Walworth, which met at Elephant and Castle, Newington on 21 March 1765.
The inn was rebuilt in 1816 and again in 1898. The Victorian pub was demolished and the present Elephant & Castle pub, at the junction of New Kent Road and Newington Causeway, was part of the comprehensive redevelopments in the 1960s.
But how did the original pub get its name?
The popular and enduring myth is that the inn took its name from an English corruption of the Spanish phrase La Infanta de Castilla, a title held by Eleanor of Castile, wife of Edward I. Her funeral procession in 1290 was later marked by Eleanor Crosses the length of England, ending at Charing Cross – but not at Elephant and Castle.
She is commemorated in a mural in Stony Stratford, but is also remembered for her virulent antisemitism.
However, Eleanor of Castile never held the title of Infanta de Castilla. Indeed, according to Stephen Humphrey in his book Elephant and Castle, a History (2013), the pub sign at Elephant and Castle only begins to be used in the area about 500 years after Queen Eleanor lived.
A second disputed origin is with another Infanta of Castille, Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII. When she first arrived in London in 1502, she lived in a house on South Bank that later become the residence of the architect Christopher Wren. This building is about a mile and a half from where Elephant and Castle roundabout stands today.
The house on South Bank is close to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. In Twelfth Night, ‘The Elephant’ is a lodging house in the ‘south suburbs’ recommended by Antonio to Sebastian as the best place to stay.
It serves as the staging ground for their separation and Sebastian’s later mix-up with Viola (as Cesario). It is often been said that this reference in one of Shakespeare’s best-loved comedies is to lodgings in Elephant and Castle. But Twelfth Night is set in Illyria, not in London, and the first documented performance of the play (1602) was not in Southwark but at Middle Temple Hall, on the other side of the river.
A third popular explanation for the name of Elephant and Castle is found, supposedly, in the heraldic symbols of the Cutlers’ Company, one of the livery companies in London. The company adopted the image of an Elephant and Castle as the crest in its coat of arms granted in 1622. It may have been a reference to the use of ivory in cutlery handles rather than any imagined connections with Eleanor of Castile or Catherine of Aragon, or, for that matter, with Coventry or the Beaumont family.
An elephant and castle can be seen in the coat of arms granted to the Cutlers’ Companyin 1476 and depicted at Cutlers’ Hall, with elephants as supporters on each side of the shield. The elephant theme is repeated throughout the hall on Warwick Lane, including the pair of elegant golden elephant heads on the door knockers.
The Royal African Company, founded in 1672, used a similar sign because of the ivory trade.
But Elephant and Castle as the name of the public house that gives its name to the area in South London first appears in records in 1765, when the building is first described as a public house called the Elephant and Castle. Stephen Humphrey finds no evidence to connect the pub or its early proprietors with the Cutlers’ Company or the cutlery trade. He concludes that the sudden appearance of the ancient sign in the area cannot be explained and suggests that, as with the vast majority of pub names, the choice may have been a random one.
The image of an elephant with a castle on its back has been popular for centuries and throughout Europe. The mediaeval bestiaries said Indian and Persian warriors fought from wooden towers on the backs of elephants, an elephant and castle is one of the symbols in the 14th-century choir stalls in Chester Cathedral, and the emblem is found in the coat of arms of Coventry, granted by Edward III in 1345.
The Garter stall plate of John Beaumont (1361-1396), 4th Lord Beaumont, shows his coat of arms used a lion passant as the crest. But his great-grandson, William Beaumont (1438-1507), 2nd Viscount Beaumont, used the heraldic device of an elephant with a tower on its back.
William supported the Lancastrian cause and Henry VI. He was on the losing side at the battles of Towton (1461) and Barnet (1471), was twice stripped of his land and titles by the Yorkists, and spent many years in exile or in prison. In the end, he fought for Henry Tudor at Bosworth, and within a few months he was restored to his lands and titles.
Livery badges for John Beaumont with the elephant and castle rebus are on display in the British Museum, the London Museum and Salisbury Museum. John Beaumont’s uncle, Henry Beaumont (1411-ca 1447/1448), ancestor of the Beaumont family of Wednesbury. That branch of the Beaumont family appear to have adopted the elephant and castle as the crest in their coat-of-arms.
Henry Beaumont’s wife Joan was the daughter and heiress of William Heronville of Wednesbury and widow of William Leventhope of Wednesbury. When Joan died, Wednesbury Manor was inherited by her only son, Sir Henry Beaumont (1446-1471) of Wednesbury. This Henry’s granddaughter, Dorothy Beaumont, married Humphrey Comberford of Comberford Hall, who was the Master of the Guild of Saint Mary and Saint John the Baptist in Lichfield in 1530.
The wealth of the Wednesbury estate greatly enriched the Comberford family, which explains in part why the line of descent from the Beaumont family was emphasised by the decorative heraldic family trees on the ceiling of the Moat House, the family’s Tudor house on Lichfield Street in Tamworth.
But I have strayed away from the questions I had last week about the origins of the name of Elephant and Castle in London. Perhaps there are no answers.
