Our dragons

Background

A pair of dragons has supported the City of London's crest in its coat of arms since the early 17th century, and ornamental boundary markers were erected at points of entry into the City in the late twentieth century, each surmounted by a dragon clutching the heraldic shield.

The introduction of the dragons appears to have been inspired by the legend of St George, whose cross has been a City emblem since at least the early 14th century, and may have been specifically linked to a popular misconception that an earlier crest's fan-like object bearing the cross was a dragon's wing. 

We have added more dragon's to our family. They have been modernised to welcome you to the Family Information Service.

Co-production

We took our designer with us to The Aldgate School and asked the children what they thought of the our dragons. We asked questions like: 'are they friendly?' and 'are they scary?' and 'do you like the name?'. The children enthusiastically told us their preferences about the colours, teeth and spikes! With their input, we now have a full family of dragons.

The dragons

Hendrick
Big, grey and red. He has been around for a long time! You may have seen him at our events, pre-coronavirus. He represents the whole Family Information Service, in particular the directory.

Colet
Her name stands for City of London Education Team. She is orange and blue, and can be found on our Education pages.  

Zong (pronoun: They/Them)
Named by our City of London families, Zong represents our Local Offer/SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) pages. You can find them on the Local Offer section of the website.

Coltale
His name stands for City of London Talks and Listens Enthusiastically. You will have seen Coltale on our social media platforms. He represents our speech and language programme.