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Last edited 25 Sep 2022

Weathercock

A weathercock, weathervane or wind vane is a rotating device installed at the top of a building to indicate the direction of the wind.

The first documented weathervane was a two and a half metre long bronze cast depicting the god Triton, installed on The Tower of the Winds near the Acropolis in Athens in around 48 B.C. Other weathervanes during this time include a copper horsemen in Syria and a human figure in Constantinople. References to weathervanes mounted on buildings appear in De Architectura, by the Roman author and architect Vitruvius in the 1st-century, whilst the oldest surviving weathervane, the Gallo di Ramperto from the 9th-century is found in the Museo di Santa Giulia, Brescia, Italy.

Although, the earliest recorded British weathercock was erected on the tower of Winchester Cathedral in the 10th century, and the oldest weathercock still functioning in England can be found on the church in Ottery St. Mary, Devon and dates from about 1340, it is generally accepted weather cocks existed in England before then. The Anglo-saxons for example, from as early as around the 8th Century, made reference to weathercocks in a famous riddles of the time.

'I have a puffed-out breast and a swollen neck; I have a head and a tall tail; I have eyes and ears, and a single foot, a rough hard bill, and a long neck and two sides; hollow in the middle. My home is over men. I suffer, much whenever he moves me, who stirs the forest, and rains and hard hail beat on me as I stand, and frost freezes and snow falls on me, hollow-bellied...'

There was proliferation of weathercocks across Europe in the 9th century due to a papal edict that required every Church in Christendom to be mounted by a cockerel, a symbol to recall Peter's betrayal of Christ (LUKE 22:34) "I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me". By the 13th century the word for weathercock and weathervane had become interchangeable, but royal licence was required for the use of a weathervane.

By the 14th century, dolphins, fish, griffins and dragons might have been seen, and by the Middle Ages, a coat of arms. Tudor weathervanes of the 15th and 16th century, may have had a stone beast, holding a rod with a banner-like vane mounted upon it, 12 of which were recorded as having been located on the Manor House at Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire. By the 18th century copper weathervanes in England almost entirely gave way to wrought iron flat silhouettes.

By the Victorian age, where ornament was celebrated, weathervanes along with or designed into windcowls, as well as sundials would have been common sights, and by the 19th century, the subjects of the weathervane somewhat exploded with exotic animals and mythical creatures, sporting motifs, and even trade signs being mass produced in cast iron.