The Centenary of the House System
A major project for the Archive this year is to mark the centenary of J.A. Nairn’s decision to create a House System at Merchant Taylors’. The aim is to produce a series of articles for the December edition of Concordia, but our research has already yielded some interesting leads.
We are particularly interested in an article from the Taylorian of February, 1922 which outlined designs of crests for the first four Houses.
A little research suggests that the badges would have looked something like this:
| White - Lion Rampant |
Spenser - Griffin's Head |
Hilles - Heraldic Bird |
Clive - Wyvern |
As the article says, the idea was for the designs to be placed on rugby shirts for the tournaments around which the House system was designed. There is no indication as to whether these were ever deployed but the centenary might be a good time to re-adopt the idea and expand it to the eight current houses.
What are your thoughts? Email Jonny Taylor.