CityandLivery

It has been said that the City throws away nothing it finds to be useful, and this is true of many of its ancient customs and traditions handed down through the centuries. While the City is a place of tradition and heritage it also at the vanguard of modernity; a centre of excellence for innovation in business; finance; technology; law; and a champion of diversity and inclusion in the commercial; civic, and livery realms.  Nowhere is this more apparent the way the Livery Companies and the City's civic institutions have evolved to encourage greater diversity among their membership. Many companies have signed up to the Diversity Charter , others have codified their own principles of inclusion. At a practical level all Livery Companies now admit women; the Lady Past Masters Association has grown to nearly 200 members since the first female Master, Sylvia Tutt (1983-84) and the first female Lord Mayor, Mary Donaldson (1983-84). Somewhere between a third and a half of the Livery Company...

This article is the second in a two part series that provides Liverymen with the knowledge required to learn their heraldic ABC (Arms, Badge and Crest). It is not intended to explain the coat of arms of each and every Livery Company, there are two excellent books that do that far better than I can (details at the bottom of this article). This second part explains an Armorial Achievement and its component parts. If you haven't already done so you may wish to read the first part on debunking the myths of heraldry before going further. What's an Armorial Achievement? Early in 2017 my daughter joined the Brownies and quickly made a plan to obtain every badge by Christmas 2018. She is making rapid progress against that plan and my wife and I have already sewn nine badges on her sash. The sash is a visual record of my daughter's achievements and affiliations of which she is rightly proud to display. The badges are arranged in a particular order and only granted when she h...