THE CITY OF OXFORD HIGH SCHOOL MAGAZINE VoL. LVIII, ii April 1966 no 185
Ian (Spud) Taylor writes:
The school badge is based on the mayoral seal first used about 1300 and redesigned about 1400 in more elegant form. The matrices of these are now lost but the exact design of the second seal was reproduced in the screw-press version of the early nineteenth century (presumably before the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act divested mayors of their former personal powers). The impression illustrated here has been kindly provided by the Town Clerk’s department. One can only suppose that the tree originally was a rebus – perhaps the private one of William of Burcestre (Bicester) who was mayor eleven times between 1311 and 1339.
The little shield of St. George in the foliage serves both for the national saint and for the Chapel of St. George within Oxford Castle. There is a discrepancy of detail between the seal and the shields carved on the front of the School and above the doorways of the Hall, where the shield with the cross has been turned into the arms of the City of London by the addition of the sword of St. Paul in the first quarter.
The error, whose origin is not far to seek, appears in the device printed on the letter-heads used in the correspondence with the Architect. The Clerk to the Governors, Robert S. Hawkins, was Town Clerk from 1876 to 1880; he was a keen supporter of the new School and somewhat of a local historian. To grace his notepaper in 1877 he annexed the roundel design of the mayor’s seal and encircled it with a legend referring to his office-CLER(ICUS) COMMUNIS) OXONI (A)E. Perhaps he wished to draw attention to the identical rights and customs granted to the mayors and citizens of Oxford and London in the charter of Henry II and subsequently, but it was more likely to have been a lithographic artist’s error which was perpetuated after Hawkins’ untimely death till about 1920 on Education Office and Town Clerk’s note-paper.
In the first forty years of the School’s existence the City shield with motto was printed on official reports, as befitted the City of Oxford High School for Boys, commonly known more simply as Oxford High School. The School’s name was changed for a period of nine years to the less Teutonic City of Oxford School at the beginning of 1923, and a design came into use incorporating a weedy version of the shields carved in the Hall. This appeared in coloured form on the chocolate and red football shirts of colours-men and, surrounded by a garter with the school’s new name, on sports programmes and other printed matter. Before long, in 1925, Mr. Parkinson introduced uniform brown blazers bearing a coloured badge, and house-colours were placed on the border of the recently introduced cap-badges. Gone for ever was the O.H.S. monogram on caps and hat-bands.
In 1927 the University Printer obtained the services of the late George Kruger Gray to design the first badge to bear the motto. His initials, K.G., can be seen on this and on the reverses of English silver coinage from 1927 to 1949.
In 1948 Mr. B. A. Field drew the alternative design shown and this has been used very effectively in the past few years complete with red surround and white lettering as the badge on the navy blue blazers worn by the fifth and sixth forms.
The blazon or heraldic description of the shield would read: Silver an ox full-faced gules horns and hoofs gold passing a ford wavy azure and silver in front of a tree in its proper colours and a shield of the City of London in sinister chief, viz. Silver a cross gules and in the quarter a sword point upward gules.
I. H. Taylor