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Good luck motifs

More luck of the house

Luck talismans and  other symbols may be found built into houses in the Calderdale area. There are some that protect the luck of the house and others constituting distinctive local traditions.

Favourite locations are thresholds, such as windows, doorways and gable ends – the kind of place where you might see a horseshoe hung. Two symbols are especially local to West Yorkshire and Calderdale in particular – the archaic stone head and the arrowhead terminal. They are mostly features of seventeenth-century buildings, and often appear together.

The archaic head – a mysterious carved stone head with very basic and simple facial features – has a long tradition as a magical motif, and it resurfaced locally with a vigour in the seventeenth century as a device to protect a house and its occupants from misfortune. Well over a hundred examples are known from around the borough.

Another frequent location for protective emblems is the terminal to the drip moulding above a door or window. As well as heads, arrow-like terminals, roundels, diagonal crosses and other shapes are known locally. The arrowhead was known as 'the devil's arrow' in the 19th century, indicating its intention of warding off anything demonic; but the roundel, often with a 'pupil' in the centre, warded off the evil eye, and the diagonal cross, before being known as St Andrew's cross, was the Norse 'dag' rune, bestowing good luck on houses to which it was affixed. Spirals, also, are found, symbolizing smoke and thus protection against fire, as on the fireplace in the White Lion Inn, Hebden Bridge.

Some houses, such as Magson House in Warley, have a more Christian emblem to look after them – the sacred monogram of Jesus, or very occasionally a simple cross.

All these folk beliefs emerge from days when the world was more complex and capricious than it seems today, and there were no insurance companies to buffer the shock of misfortune.

Recommended reading: 'North Country Folk Art' by Peter Brears.

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