A simple solution to head debacle

AN open letter to all Ashbourne Councillors, Town or District - please don’t allow the most perfect marketing opportunity for Ashbourne to slip through your fingers.

I refer of course to ‘the Head’ that once stood on the gallows sign of the Green Man Hotel and recently created much welcome publicity for Ashbourne Town.

Across the country, indeed the world, the story of Ashbourne’s ‘head’ has ignited passionate debate on both sides of the argument.

There are many waiting with bated breath to learn how the Derbyshire Dales will resolve the issue. The District Council’s website rightly points out that any alteration to a listed structure requires listing building consent. English Heritage must be involved.

My purpose today is to suggest how a compromise position could be turned into a superb marketing opportunity with a ready worldwide audience just waiting for the chance to visit Ashbourne.

And the compromise is this: renew the sign omitting the words ‘the Black’s head’, and return the figurehead to its original position.

It is not the figurehead that is to blame for the adverse comments, the petitions, and the allegations of racism, it’s the descriptive words crafted below. And they’re wrong anyway.

The sign originally commemorated the union of two public houses, The Green Man and the Blackamoor pub.

So the sign ought to have said ‘The Green Man Hotel and the Blackamoor pub’. That it didn’t is because (and here I speculate) the Blackamoor pub was probably well known locally for its theatrical sign - displaying the two faces of the theatrical world, tragedy and comedy.

That is why one side has a downturned mouth and the other has the mouth upturned into a smile.

If you don’t accept my speculation, please ask yourselves why ‘the head’ has two faces opposite each other, one gloomy whilst the other laughs.

I’ve little doubt one side was black - perhaps both sides. But many images of theatrical icons show the two faces of tragedy and comedy in gold paint, still others in contrasting colours.

I hold no candle to any particular shade, but this is the moment to celebrate the gallows sign and its head with a splendid makeover of the whole structure that recreates the centre of Ashbourne as somewhere worth visiting with a carefully worded history of the sign on display.

Rather than the intricate but obscure symbol that has been proposed, let Ashbourne’s ‘Turk’s Head’ complete with colourful turban be the powerful symbol of Ashbourne’s heritage as a market town, with its assizes and gallows, its pubs and its Shrovetide legacy.

Ashbourne’s history deserves nothing less.

Charles Swabey Osmaston