Period garden roller mystery

[Keith Bowman]

Our (presumed Victorian) garden roller has a cast iron roundel bolted into the handle. My presumption, quite possibly wrong, is that the foundry making the rollers offered retailers the option of putting a roundel of their own choice into the handle. Now to the question: the roundel on our roller shows a person in apparently Tudor dress carrying their head in an outstretched hand. This seems a rather bizarre piece of advertising even for a Victoran ironmonger. There is a scroll under the person which is virtually indecipherable but could possibly be "St Clare" (Or even St Olive!). The only St Clare I have been able to trace was an Italian follower of Francis of Assisi, who founded the order known as the 'Poor Clares' and who died peacefully aged 59 in 1253. I can't think that there is any connection. We live in West Suffolk, not far from Clare, so the roller could well have originally been bought locally but there is no obvious link to a St Clare. Bright ideas anyone?

This is the roundel:

 

[ChrisD]

Not a bright idea but a complete guess, St Osyth? Closest cephalophore I can think of.

 

[Keith Bowman]

Thank you. That's an intriguing idea, I'll have another look at it in daylight. I'm prepared to admit to having had to look up that long word you used. St Osyth has a web-site - I might try an email to the clerk of the council. Should give him/her something more interesting to do than writing up committee minutes. Although if they want their roller back, they'll have to come and fetch it!

 

[Lime]

It may be an old Health & Safety warning to grass cutters depicting what may happen if they do not carry or operate their scythes properly.
Alternatively it could have been the old local squire's statutory written statement of employment.

 

[LadyArowana]

The info on Saint Osyth from wiki suggests that the manner of her martyrdom fits with the image.

"The 13th-century chronicler Matthew Paris repeats some of the legend that had accrued around her name. The site of her martyrdom became transferred to the holy spring at Quarrendon. The holy spring at Quarrendon, mentioned in the time of Osgyth's aunts, now became associated with her legend, in which Osgyth stood up after her execution, picking up her head like Saint Denis in Paris, and other cephalophoric martyrs and walking with it in her hands, to the door of a local convent, before collapsing there"

They also mention,

"Alternative spellings of her name include Sythe" which would be relevant to the garden impliments business!

 

[Penners]

It seems obvious to me that the roller was made for Henry VIII. It was probably what gave him the idea of how to rid himself of Anne Boleyn.

"With 'er head tucked underneath 'er arm, she waaaaalks the Bloody Tower..." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nv9xdH-tZM

 

[Keith Bowman]

I have had a very prompt reply from the Clerk to the St Osyth parish council, who has also consulted the village historian - but the upshot is that they don't think it is St Osyth and they can find no trace of St Osyth ever having had an ironmonger. (Apparently the image is facing the wrong way for their particular saint - but how do you tell which way a headless person is facing?). Having had another peer at the wording on the casting, I am fairly sure it does not say St Osyth anyway. Any further suggestions will be welcome.