The Crawley Town badge is a quartered shield with the club’s name above and the formation date along with the club nickname in a banner below, all in the club’s colours and sewn onto the shirts with a nice gold thread. (PIC 1) The top right quarter has a football surrounded by something I have never come across before which is the name of the county the town lies in, West Sussex, so as it is on the badge it gets explained.
It is derived from the Anglo-Saxon Suth-Seaxe, which means land, and the people of the South Saxons, meaning Crawley is in the land west of the South Saxons. In the quarter below is one of two references to the club’s nickname “The Red Devils” and the similarity with Manchester United stops dead right there. To the left of Satan is a Latin phrase “NOLI CEDERE” which means to us Anglo-Saxons, Do Not Give Up.
The actual name Crawley, again from the Anglo-Saxon means, a clearing once infested with crows, and the area was loud and smelly at times with locals getting poohed on so it had to be cleared. One day a travelling tribe of Pygmy Africans saw the plight of the tribe of people in the land of west South Saxons and felt pity for them and vowed to stay until their plague had been removed. The Pygmy tribe from west South Africa set up camp, dancing and singing until the crows had been vanquished from the area some three months later. In homage to these people, the town of Crawley now sports an emblem as seen in the top left quarter of the badge, an African shield with three spears in trident fashion behind. All true, except for the travelling Pygmies but it is a better story than the truth which is three planes taking off from the Gatwick diamond. That is what you get for employing million-pound design companies to help design your club’s badge instead of asking the supporters to help which always leads to a better idea and is free. For some reason the more you pay these people the less their designs look like what they represent. The formation date and again the club nickname are displayed in the banner below.
A previous badge has borrowed from the coat of arms belonging to Crawley Urban District Council. (PIC 2) The club’s name in a banner above and the nickname below are separated by a football on either side. It differs from the arms in as much as they have sat Satan in the crown, coloured him red as a symbol of the nickname “The Red Devils”, and the shield bears the cross of St George. The motto is also different “NOVA AETAS” meaning, A New Age. The arms themselves were granted in February 1957, and the supporters were added in 1976 when Crawley became a borough. The cross in the shield symbolises the importance of Crawley’s position at the junction of the London to Brighton and Horsham to East Grinstead roads. The nine flying martlets are from the traditional arms of the South Saxons. The gold colour and the blue background are the Sussex colours, and nine represents the nine communities which made up the original Crawley New Town. Martlets are a heraldic device and what bird they are differs depending on what country you’re in. Here in England they are usually regarded as swallows, and in France, ducks. The acorns commemorate the oak forests which once covered much of North Sussex, crows love an oak tree. The crest above the shield lies on a bed of oak leaves and they are blue and white, the main colours of the arms. Oak leaves are common in heraldry because they symbolise growth, so civic heraldry wants to promote the growth of the towns and in turn the cities, and family heraldry wants to promote growth within the family. The crest itself features a crown which has been made to look like an iron fence. It relates to the Crawley Development Corporation’s Crest, and is an emblem of a planned area. The royal lion upon it that looks like he is hammering in the last rivet on the fence symbolises the Manor Royal Industrial Estate. The borough of Crawley includes Gatwick, one of the world’s largest airports, so the supporters are an eagle on the sinister of the shield, with its wings raised, and because Gatwick is a British airport a winged lion on the dexter. Dexter means right hand and sinister left and before you point out that I have described them the other way around, for those of you not yet in the know, heraldic devices on arms are always described from the view of the wearer. This goes back to the days when arms were first worn by knights on armour to identify themselves, and are worn either on a shield or helmet. That is why the top of the arms is called a crest and is almost always above a knight’s helmet. The silver crisscrossed area within the wings represents Crawley industry, with the silver colour suggesting the steel and aluminium it uses. The two red thunderbolts held by the lion and the eagle represent the town’s flourishing electrical industry. The motto “I Grow and I Rejoice”, is a translation of a phrase from Seneca’s Epistle, a Latin work of 124 letters that Seneca the Younger wrote at the end of his life during his retirement, after he had worked for the Emperor Nero for more than ten years, and refers to the building of a happy and expanding community.
The oak leaves, acorns and motto have certainly done their job as far as encouraging Crawley to grow, with one of the world’s largest airports and a football team no one had ever heard of a few years ago now playing in the football league. Founded in 1896 it took Crawley another 66 years before turning professional in 1962 and then another 50 years to get into the football league. So out of little acorns is what they say, and that should encourage all non-league sides to aspire to greater things. Crawley plies their trade at the Broadfield Stadium and will chop and change its name as sponsors change. Currently it is, The Peoples Pension Stadium. I would imagine the pension people get is a lot less than 6,134, the ground’s capacity. Local rivals are few, but being in the middle of Brighton to the south and Crystal Palace to the north these could be considered as rivals, but would only get to meet if picked out the black bag in a cup round. If you would like more info on Crawley Town then it’s as the crow flies to www.crawleytownfc.com
