Stokeinteignhead Truncheon
The Museum of Policing in Devon & Cornwall holds a great many items recording the history of the policing profession. Our team of staff and volunteers are painstakingly cataloguing and researching the thousands of items in our possession.
The Stokeinteignhead Truncheon is a particular treasure within our extensive object collection.
In the early days of policing, the constable did not wear a uniform. The truncheon was thus given as a symbol of office instead, showing the right to enforce the law and keep order. It was to be used in defence if necessary.
Our truncheon could have been given to the local parish constable or, indeed, a special constable. Sometimes the truncheon would be on show, hung outside his house, so that villagers would have known the constable was ‘in’, rather than out on patrol.
The example shown here in the photograph is known as a ‘baluster’ design, created by a woodturner, maybe a craftsman not far from the policeman’s village. West Country truncheons are often found with a distinctive square head, which is sometimes rounded as per this example. Square headed truncheons are never found elsewhere and round headed examples only rarely.
Most standard truncheons are painted black, varnished, or oiled natural woodgrain, however the Stokeinteignhead example is unusual for its blue/green base paintwork. There are lovely decorative touches, such as the band around the handle and the decorative top. The colour may have symbolised the nearby estuary, or the base paint may have changed due to age. Might it once have been the shade of green used in the Devon flag to represent the hills?!
Real skill has been employed in the decoration of this truncheon. Not only is it beautifully painted and gilded, it is also sign-written with the incredibly long name of the village! The pride in the workmanship extends to the very top of the object. Nothing was left unadorned.
The VR clearly dates this to the reign of Queen Victoria. Because decoration started to fade out around 1880, we can say it was made anytime between 1837 and that time.
It is always worth looking closely at the V on old truncheons to make sure it was not originally a W (for William IV), which was then altered at the point when when the reigning monarch changed. However, the background blue/green colour is similar to another truncheon in our collection which helps us pinpoint this object as being in use early in Queen Victoria’s reign, probably 1837 to 1842.
What we don’t yet know is to whom this truncheon was allocated Certainly it would have been to a responsible upstanding citizen! Despite a trawl of the census of 1841, we haven’t yet found a name. He was very likely to be a native of Stokeinteignhead, with a family, and one day we may track him down!.