Right stuff, White Stuff
“Ah, I know what that will be,” I thought to myself, looking up above a shop called White Stuff in the main street in Bishop’s Stortford. I was thinking that the building must have been a pub called the White Hart – a common pub name after all – and that I was looking at its former sign. Big 3-D signs like this are uncommon, but they do exist, and I was pleased to find another.
How wrong could I be? This magnificent beast is in fact the emblem of a volunteer regiment, the First Hertfordshire Light Horse. It was made in 1862 for the regiment’s barracks, but a few years later (some sources says in 1868, others 1872) the regiment disbanded. Major William Holland rescued the stag and had it mounted above the window of a shop he owned, where it stayed until the shop was pulled down in 1983.
Then the hart was restored and installed on this shop in 1986, where it has been ever since. It’s seriously large, this stag – it towers over the adjacent sash window, which must be well over 4 feet tall – and its shaggy coat is vigorously rendered. It’s an asset to the streetscape, a reminder of a bit of 19th-century history, and an object lesson in the way some features survive, as if truly alive and kicking, against all the odds.
