Coat of arms of Kidderminster County Borough Council which were formerly on the facade of Mason Science College, the forerunner of the University of Birmingham which received its Royal Charter in 1900.
The new University gradually transferred away from Edmund Street to the Edgbaston campus over next 60 years. The former main library and the Arts Faculty buildings being built in the late 1950's completing the transfer process.
The Kidderminster shield is one of four shields now displayed outside the entrance to the Law building at the University. The shields form a column with the Kidderminster shield at the top below which is a tablet inscribed as follows:
'These shields adorned Sir Josiah
Mason’s Science College, which was
erected in Edmund Street in 1880.
Became part of the University of
Birmingham from 1900 to 1961 and
was demolished in 1964 to make way
for the City of Birmingham Library.'
The Kidderminster Arms:
Azure two Chevronels Or each charged with four Pellets between three Bezants.
A blue shield (Escutcheon) with two small gold chevrons each with four black roundels (Pellets) between three gold roundels (Bezants).
Chevronel: a diminutive of the chevron, of which it is normally one half the width, the term being used properly when there is more than one chevron. With the older writers, however, the term is used, and so may still be used when there are two or even three chevrons. (
visit link)
Jacqueline Fearn in her book “Discovering Heraldry” (ISBN: 978-0-74780-660-8) and explains further that the narrower forms of the honourable ordinaries are for example:
Bendlet (Bend); Pallet or Endorse (Pale); and Chevronel (Chevron). Later it is noted that ‘where diminutives are used the field must be shown on either side as well as between them to distinguish the charged field a varied field.’
Terms for roundels are explained at the following link: (
visit link)
‘The arms are based upon the unofficial arms previously used by the Borough, which were adopted at some point in the 18th century, as they appear in that form in a cartouche on Doharty's 1753 map of the town.
There seems little doubt that the Borough appropriated, with the substitution of bezants for plates, the existing arms of Kidderminster Inn, a house in Chancery Lane in London occupied by lawyers of the Court of Chancery.
Kidderminster Inn had been built by Edmund Kedermister or Kidderminster of Langley Marish, Buckinghamshire around 1600, and he adapted his family coat of arms [Azure two chevronels Or between three Bezants] for the arms of the building.
When the Corporation of Kidderminster, realising, it would seem, that the arms of Kidderminster Inn were an adaptation of those of the Kidderminster family, took details from both sources, e.g. the bezants from the family coat of arms and the four roundels per chevron from those of Kidderminster Inn.
Another theory is that the black roundels added for difference may have been suggested by the red roundels in the arms of the See of Worcester.’
(
visit link)
The University of Birmingham, founded in 1900 by Joseph Chamberlain, plays a prominent role in higher education across the world. In its seedling form, however, the University grew out of the vision and enterprise of Sir Josiah Mason, who endowed and supervised the construction of his Science College in Edmund Street, Birmingham, decades earlier. Josiah Mason came from modest beginnings, which influenced his desire to create a college ‘easily available to persons of all classes, even the humblest.’ Making his fortune as a manufacturer of pen-nibs, he was an enthusiastic philanthropist, and founded an orphanage in Erdington. He was knighted in 1872. In 1880, Sir Josiah Mason’s Science College took its first students. The façade was decorated with Mason’s mermaid crest and the carved shields which are installed here. They represent the heraldic shields of the region, Kidderminster, Worcester, Birmingham and Warwickshire. (
visit link)