Just looked at the council documents about the area around the ground being redeveloped and the town crest caught my eye. It has a stag and the sea on it, fair enough it looks alright and uses the old words for stag and sea.

Why is there a large rat attempting to shag the stag though? Does the fact that the stag has turned its head to talk to the rat mean something? Is it saying, "Come on then little fella," as part of a bid to promote the town as the ideal spot for cross species sex tourism? Or is it saying, "Gerroffus," as a way of assuring businesses considering moving to the town that the stag will never allow them to be shagged by marauding rats like they would be in Darlington or Middlesbrough?

We need answers.

Probably not the serious reply you were looking for but i was always told it was a Hart with a Lee (type of stoat) on it's back standing in a Pool.

...Or that could have just been b#llocks

the town was named after the paddling area on the Headland, owned by an eminent member of the Pipkins cast. Fact.

I thought it was a hunting hound on the stags back?

Thats what I heard as well

Where the fck did you get that username from? Very good!

Didn't know about the lee bit, I thought 'le' was from French and it was the Normans who liked hunting for stags by the sea. Lee makes sense with the picture though. Trying to catch a stag with a stoat doesn't seem like the best plan to me unless he is the leader of a pack of stoats who are all about to pile on the stag and finish him off.

stoat?? haven't you heard about the latest West View "designer" breed of stoat/cross pitbull ..can get very natsy when in a pack!

http://thebeautifulhistory.wordpress.co ... ol-united/

Apparently a deerhound?

It was the name of a quiz team i used be in when i was a student at the FE. I don't know where it originated from but it usually got a good response.

the music for which was composed and played by John Williams and became an international hit. Hartlepool is truly an inspiration
I love history facts

I always believed that it was Breton monks who named the town and the literal translation was 'Deer by the Bay.' The crest came from them hunting deer for food.

How true that is I dunno. I do know that the Latin means 'From the sea comes industry,' though. Me Mam did Latin at the convent.

Its true deer were hunted in Hartlepool in the Forest which is now somewhere under the sea at Seaton

This is a deerhound hunting for babies and it is about five times the size of that ratty stoat thing on the stag's back. I think the monk who did the crest might have been too shyte at drawing to do illuminated letters so he came up with this instead.

Hartlepool - the place where harts drink according to Bede in 647 AD