Pew Sheet – 6th July 2025

The Rector writes ‘An unattributable but encouraging thought I came across on the Internet last week.’

Random Notes CDXCVI

Founded in about 1973, and in existence for in or around ten years at this address, there was at Hay Hill off Berkeley Square in the west end of London a most wonderful shop by the name of ‘Heirloom and Howard’ whose line of business was the sale of all things armorial, their speciality being Chinese armorial china, on which subject, the proprietor, David Howard was an authority and author a definitive work. Their stock included much, a sumptuous and tempting collection of items, all of which bore either a crest, coat of arms or the like, including a large range of items, hall chairs, coach panels, illustrations of arms, etc, etc.

In the early years of the 1980’s the compiler of this note, on one of a number of visits to Hay Hill, bought a few printing blocks, including that here illustrated, these line blocks, of which there were a great number, had come from the printers of the one time regularly issued, and not insubstantial volumes of Burke’s Peerage, Knightage, and Companionage. The books, which first appeared in the early years of the nineteenth century, had since their inception been printed by the letterpress method, with these blocks being reused from year to year, until in or around the mid.1970’s when the method of printing changed to that of lithography, the result of which change being that the heretofore much used blocks were now redundant, and subsequently disposed of.

The block here illustrated, together with part of a page, printed from it, in an 1897 edition of ‘Burke’s’, are of the arms of the family of St, Leger, Viscounts Doneraile, of Doneraile Court, co. Cork.