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plaque · England

Holt Owl

Photograph at the Holt Owl plaque

This sign portrays the legend of the Holt Owl and replaces the sign which was presented by the Holt Women's Institute's in 1976. This new sign was provided by public subscription and erected in 1990. 'Holt' was the Anglo-Saxon word for wood. Centuries ago, the town was known as 'Holt Markett'. The manor of Holt was once held by Edward the Confessor (1042-1066), and is recorded in the Domesday Book (1086). In 1708 the town was devastated by fire, but was re-built and so acquired its Georgian character. The legend of the Holt owl goes back to the time when some local men caught an owl and put it in the Town Pound for "safe-keeping", whereupon the owl flew away.

Inscription drawn from imported open data, awaiting original TributeLegacy editorial.

Source: Open Plaques. Geographic data via OpenStreetMap.

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Data sources

Location records are drawn from open, licence-clean datasets, kept here with attribution and gratitude to the people who maintain them.

  • Open Plaques, dedicated to the public domain (CC0). See openplaques.org.
  • Wikidata, available under the CC0 1.0 Universal dedication.
  • © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence.
  • Historic England, National Heritage List for England, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0. War memorial records are drawn from open community datasets (OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, NHLE) — never from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which is excluded.

Editorial descriptions, photography and tribute links are original TributeLegacy work, layered on top of the open data.

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