File:DUR-84F652 (FindID 410861).jpg

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DUR-84F652
Photographer
Durham County Council, Frances McIntosh, 2010-10-15 13:56:29
Title
DUR-84F652
Description
English: Heavy gold signet ring, finely engraved with a coat of arms, oriented vertically, within a dotted border.

Images of the signet ring were examined by Dr Clive Cheesman, College of Arms, who has provided the following information:

'The ring shows the coat of arms of a family called Prestwich. The coat of arms consists of a shield and, displayed on top of a helmet, a crest. The shield is quartered, the first and fourth quarters showing a design consisting of a mermaid, reputedly granted in the mid-16th century to a family called Prestwich of Hulme, Manchester. We do not unfortunately have a precise date for this grant, which is not on official record. The second and third quarters show a more complex design consisting of a chevron with lions' faces on it and a lion between two fleurs-de-lys in the upper segment. This design was the original coat of arms of the family, predating the mermaid design, and there is other evidence to show that the family subsequently 'quartered' the old and the new designs together in this fashion. The crest is a porcupine.

In 1644 Thomas Prestwich, the head of the family was made a baronet, a title which died out with his son in 1676; but the nature of the helmet on this seal and the lack of a baronet's badge indicate that this seal was not made for a baronet. It may therefore have been made for the head of the family before 1644, or for a younger son. It is not clear to me that the first baronet had any younger sons, however; in terms both of its impressive size and of the style of its heraldic engraving I feel this object is consistent with being made for the head of the family before 1644. This may be Thomas Prestwich or his father Edmund Prestwich of Hulme (died 1629, buried in Manchester Collegiate Church - now the cathedral) - or an earlier generation.

There is evidence of the mermaid design in use from 1567 at the latest, though this seal still seems to be an early instance (possibly the earliest) of its use as a quartering together with the other design.'

Depicted place (County of findspot) North Yorkshire
Date between 1500 and 1700
date QS:P571,+1500-00-00T00:00:00Z/6,P1319,+1500-00-00T00:00:00Z/9,P1326,+1700-00-00T00:00:00Z/9
Accession number
FindID: 410861
Old ref: DUR-84F652
Filename: DUR-84F652.jpg
Credit line
The Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) is a voluntary programme run by the United Kingdom government to record the increasing numbers of small finds of archaeological interest found by members of the public. The scheme started in 1997 and now covers most of England and Wales. Finds are published at https://finds.org.uk
Source https://finds.org.uk/database/ajax/download/id/300535
Catalog: https://finds.org.uk/database/images/image/id/300535/recordtype/artefacts archive copy at the Wayback Machine
Artefact: https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/410861
Permission
(Reusing this file)
Attribution-ShareAlike License version 4.0 (verified 14 November 2020)

Licensing

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w:en:Creative Commons
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This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Attribution: The Portable Antiquities Scheme/ The Trustees of the British Museum
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Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current14:23, 28 January 2017Thumbnail for version as of 14:23, 28 January 20171,200 × 1,384 (518 KB) (talk | contribs)Portable Antiquities Scheme, DUR, FindID: 410861, post medieval, page 1329, batch count 15783

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