Cheshire Pub Sign The Swan with Two Nicks

Pub sign art – The Swan With Two Nicks

Park Lane, Little Bollington WA14 4TJ

Close to Dunham Massey Country Park, and the Dunham Massey Microbrewery, the pub stands close to the Little Bollington River in the heart of Cheshire, within walking distance of Altrincham.

This is an unusual but not totally uncommon pub name, sometimes mistakenly set out on pub signs and in reports as ‘The Swan With Two Necks’, which would seem rather monstrous. Nevertheless, pubs with signs featuring twin necked, two headed swans, are not unknown.  The pub in Little Bollington gets the details right though.

Nicks is the right word, and refers to deliberate grooves set onto the sides of a swan’s beak to mark its ownership. A single nick designated a swan as royal property, in the days when swan upping was legal, at least for servants of the Crown. Up to the 15th century swans could only be hunted, cooked or eaten by members of the royal family. The development of a Royal Society of Vintners, providing recommended French wines to the Royal households, gained the Vintner’s Guilds permission to own a certain number of swans for upping, cooking, etc of their own. While Royal Swans, were unmarked, Dyers guild swans were marked with a single nick to the beak, the swans presented to vintners were marked with a double nick. Today the nicking has been abolished in favour of putting rings on a bird’s leg.

In London a census was taken each July of the swans on the Thames, with each captured swan being marked with a beak-nick, two if captured by vintners who were invited to join in the painless humane hunt.

Hence the pub name.

On the sign, the swan is beautifully painted with its reflection on the water superbly captured. 

Arthur Chappell