School badges

Author: Graham Johnson.

The badge on the left may be recognised by many Old Scholars as the badge they wore (but see the note below). The Saxon crown and the seaxes are pretty much a straight lift from the arms of the County Of Middlesex granted in 1910. As is typical with many versions of the arms, the seaxes are perhaps a little curvy as the Middlesex arms used straight seaxes and the crown to differentiate it from the arms of Essex (the same arms had previously been used by both counties). It seems likely that this badge would have been adopted in 1922 when the school became a County school so if the Central School had a badge it is likely to have been different.

In the 1930s "The Chronicle Of The Edmonton County School" (the school magazine) carried a slightly different version of the badge on the cover. This one had the crown looking more like that on the quartered badge and the seaxes were straight.

The original school colours were red, blue and gold with the change to blue and yellow recorded in 1929, the same year James North became headmaster. This suggests that this badge might once have appeared in different colours.

I won the North Memorial Prize for Mathematics but no one ever thought to mention who 'North' was, so it was nice to finally be enlightened.

Old Scholars who wore this badge may point out that in their time the boys wore black blazers and it was only the girls that wore blue so presumably the badge may have featured in black and gold. As usual confirmation or correction is welcomed.

The badge on the right at the top of the page is the one I wore and is the one in use to date. A natural assumption would be that the badge dates from 1967 when the school went comprehensive which would lead one to speculate that the crown and book may have been the badge of Rowantree Secondary Modern and this is indeed the case. The Saxon crown presumably comes from the County arms. The book may perhaps be taken from the centre of the arms of Edmonton Borough Council dating from 1937 or it might just be a book (!). Rowantree was a replacement for Raglan and Croyland Secondary Modern schools and a book did feature in one quarter of the Raglan badge.

Confirmation or correction of the above is again encouraged. It would also be interesting to know if the change from Grammar and Secondary Modern to Comprehensive was abrupt or if there was any pre-empting of the merger in the uniforms.

The post 1967 badge was worn with a yellow/gold ribbon across the top of the pocket and this also appears to have been a carry over from the Grammar school uniform.

The motto "Non nobis solum", as most will know, is usually translated as "Not for ourselves alone".

The origin of the widely used motto is likely to be the words "ut praeclare scriptum est a Platone, non nobis solum nati sumus" spoken by Marcus Cato in Cicero's De Officiis (1.22). These translate to "as famously written by Plato, we are not born just for ourselves."

The modern day blazer badge is no longer worn with the ribbon over the pocket and includes a little more blue, an echo of the central stripe on the school tie which is now a pale blue colour. The badge also appears on the tie.