This page attempts to explain the significance and meaning behind the Meynell Ingram Arms Inn Sign. Research is augmented with photographs of pub signs.

Inn Signs

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This inn sign can be found at Hoar Cross in Staffordshire. Formerly called the Shoulder of Mutton, the pub's name was changed around 1860.

The sign may be named after the Meynell Hunt but is more likely in deference to the local gentry who resided at nearby Hoar Cross Hall. However, there is a case for both being used on the inn sign at Hoar Cross.

Hoar Cross Hall once belonged to the Talbots, Earls of Shrewsbury but passed to the Meynell family who rebuilt it between 1862-71. Designed by Henry Clutton, it was constructed in the Jacobean style of Temple Newsam, the seat of the Ingram family near Leeds. The connection being that, in 1782, Hugo Meynell married Elizabeth Ingram Shepherd, and their son took the name Hugo Charles Meynell-Ingram. In 1863 their grandson married Emily Charlotte, eldest daughter of Sir Charles Wood, 1st Viscount Halifax. They were responsible for the reconstruction of the hall.

Hugo Francis Meynell Ingram died in a riding accident in 1871. He was in charge of the Meynell Hunt; this can be traced traced back to 1793, a time when the Vernon family of Sudbury led a pack of hounds on the border of south Derbyshire and north Staffordshire. Following the death of Lord Vernon in 1813, the Meynell family took over the hounds and the name was changed from the Sudbury Hunt to the Hoar Cross Hunt.  Standing on the crossroads, the pub was a natural choice for the hunt meet.
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