Post & Go: Parish Symbols Part 1

Jersey’s parish crests date back to 1921, when a visit from King George V and Queen Mary sparked various large celebratory plans across the island. Part of these celebrations included creating parish symbols, originally illustrated by Alfred G. Wright who drew inspiration from the concepts of Major N.V.L Rybot, of La Société Jersiaise. 

‘Post & Go: Parish Symbols – Part 1’ raises awareness of Jersey’s parish crests and the symbolic meanings behind them. This issue focuses on the western parish crests with an upcoming part two planned for the future, which will feature the eastern parish crests.

The stamps include photographic images of various symbols that represent the western parish crests, including a fish for St Brelade placed prominently within a blue background was inspired by the story of how St Brelade’s patron saint was believed to have spent Easter on what he believed to be a rock and was instead a cetacean or huge fish. 

Interestingly, a portion of the parish crests have gone through significant changes since their original creation. For example, St John’s parish in 1921 was of a lamb resting on a book due to illustrations of John the Baptist with a lamb. In 1923, Major Rybot revised the crest to feature a gold (now white) Maltese cross on a green shield. 

Post & Go is a self-service postage stamp system, first introduced by Royal Mail in 2008 and later adopted by Jersey Post as the next evolution of self-adhesive stamps. Since December 2023, Royal Mail is no longer issuing Post & Go stamps, while Jersey Post aims to continue the annual issues and overprints.

These new Post & Go stamps will be available for various postage needs, including Local Letter 100g, Local Large 100g, UK Letter 100g, UK Large 100g, Europe 100g, and Rest of World 100g.