The ties that bind

This week brings a rare and instructive good news story involving hedgehogs, neckties, and the power of a determined individual to overturn decline. 

Our hero is a young theologian, Calder Claydon. Claydon recently became aware through that manipulative conduit of wickedness driving us all to evil and civil war, viz X (formerly Twitter) that the British Hedgehog Preservation Society (BHPS) once offered for sale an excellent Society tie in navy blue silk, scattered with ambling hedgehogs. 

Claydon, being a man of taste, conceived a not unreasonable desire to own and sport one of these most elegant pieces of neckwear. Consequently, he emailed the BHPS to ask if any were available for purchase. They were not, came the reply. “They were not a popular seller”, he was told, and because so many had to be made as a minimum order it was not feasible to reproduce them given the lack of demand.

How can such an item of beauty be forbidden to a public starved of beauty, and all for the preservation of the hedgehog

Claydon posted this response on X with an expression of disappointment, perhaps thinking that this would be the end of the matter. However, X, with its indefatigable capacity to sort serious matters from frippery, immediately and correctly identified this as an issue of gravity. We shall have our hedgehog ties, clamoured the people, in an accumulating slew of posts and retweets. How is it that we shall be denied? How can such an item of beauty be forbidden to a public starved of beauty, and all for the preservation of the hedgehog? 

Stirred by the cries of the masses, Claydon took the initiative. He called the BHPS and the Cambridge University outfitter Ryder and Amies, and before long there was a ray of light. Thanks to his work, the ties could be made again, but subject to a minimum order. 

The discerning masses on X were as good as their word. They followed their retweets with their wallets, and in just over a day 1200 orders for hedgehog ties had been placed. The demand has come close to overwhelming the silk mill. However, what is a boon for the tie manufacturers is also a boon for the hedgehogs. £10 from each sale will go to the BHPS. Thus Calder, having started the week without any notion that he might do so, thanks to his predilection for civilised neckwear and his display of determination, has unexpectedly raised at least £12,000 for the preservation of the hedgehog. 

Claydon has focused on the benefits of this remarkable affair to the British hedgehog. “The great Horatio Nelson,” he commented, “said famously that England expects that every man will do his duty, and I think that duty extends to protecting and preserving our native species. Once they are gone, they are gone forever. They are currently listed as vulnerable to extinction in Great Britain alongside other beautiful species like the Red Squirrel, and I think this is just awful. I’m grateful that, through the means of something as simple as a tie, we’ve been able to raise such a great amount for the BHPS.”

The benefits to the hedgehog were also, not unnaturally at the forefront of the response of the BHPS. Their Chief Executive, Fay Vass, commented “We’re grateful for the fantastic response to this online campaign and to Calder for generously donating his time and energy to raise funds for BHPS and awareness of hedgehogs. It is thanks to such public support that the charity can continue its important work to safeguard the future of the UK’s native hedgehogs, which face many threats and significant population decline.”

We should rightly be delighted for the hedgehogs. But let us also be delighted for another endangered species that also faces many threats and significant population decline: the necktie, and particularly that most important species of it, the club and society tie. 

Consider how the club tie was once ubiquitous. If you want a quick and vivid proof of this, either visit or Google the tie collection at the Bear Inn in Oxford. Here, in the early 1950s, the then landlord Alan Course started collecting club ties for a display. He started the custom of offering a pint of beer for anyone who would have the end of their tie snipped off, provided he did not already have an example of it. These would then be labelled and put up in frames on the wall. 

The collection now stands at around 4,500 different ties. There are golf clubs, and sailing clubs, and football clubs, and athletics clubs and hockey clubs, and debating clubs, and glee clubs, and regimental ties, old school and university associations, learned societies and royal colleges, railway preservation clubs, beer preservation societies, trade unions such as NALGO and the Transport and General Workers’. 

One can spend hours gazing on the infinite variety not just of mere patterns, but every possible excess of the heraldic imagination in these tie ends – far beyond hedgehogs, one can spot rampant lions, eagles, elephants, yawning hippopotamoi, swans, bears, penguins, martlets, griffins, leaping salmon. And yet, of this fantastical bestiary which once adorned our necks as a mere everyday thing, there is scarcely now a trace. 

What is being lost with the disappearance of the club tie? It is not just their sheer interest and variety, nor their general smartness as opposed to the lank disappointment of the open collar, or, even worse, the Burnhamite affectation of the t-shirt and suit jacket. 

It is also not just the fact that we are consigning a great British invention to oblivion. Technological advances in tie production allowed the first striped club ties to be made in Oxford around 1880 (the Exeter College Boat Club claims primacy in this innovation), and further developments in loom techniques by the Oxford firm Castell around 1910 allowed for the creation of crested ties with intricate heraldic detail. 

There is, in the retreat of the club and society tie, a loss of a wider communal culture. There has been a long term decline in the number of clubs and membership societies. Yet, for those that remain, they are likely to proclaim their identity with unsubtle merchandise – tote-bags, t-shirts, hoodies, brashly emblazoned with their names: “OLD ST CAKE’S SCHOOL SOCIETY”; “THE MASOCHISTS’ MARATHON SOCIETY” or the like. 

The club or regimental tie, by contrast, even if it might sport a fabulous mythical creature, was more understated. One could wear them proudly every day without looking like an advertising bill board. One was thus constantly reminded, although not obtrusively, that society was indeed formed of those Burkean little platoons. And their interpretation demanded some effort. To navigate society better, one had to invest some energy in learning how to recognise them – the light blue-striped Old Etonian, the red and blue of the Guards, the “egg and bacon” of the MCC, or “salmon and watercress” of the Garrick. This tie knowledge was thus one of the many pieces of mental furniture that went up to make a shared and homely common culture. And the effort of learning this knowledge would likely conjure up a respect for it.  

Tie knowledge was thus one of the many pieces of mental furniture that went up to make a shared and homely common culture

If you go back to TV programmes from the 1980s, you can see how such knowledge was once widespread and part of what people were generally expected to know. For example, in the last episodes of To The Manor Born, the smooth but ruthless executives who plot to out the self-made but sympathetic DeVere from the business which he had built from nothing wear Old Etonian ties. John Wells’ who famously portrayed the permanently sozzled Denis Thatcher in Anyone For Denis sported an East India Club tie. In both cases, the ties were a subtle nod to background and character. But with the decline of such tie wearing and the understanding of it, this shared knowledge and social symbolism is now almost forgotten. 

However, not all is lost. The Psalmist famously spoke of the stone that the builder rejected being made the chief cornerstone. Calder Claydon’s work has not only made things better for the hedgehogs, but has also shown that the club and society tie can again be retrieved from sock-drawer oblivion, and that deep down, there is a public desire for restoration. Those people who have ordered their hedgehog ties will soon be sporting them frequently with pride and almost certainly to widespread admiration. For those who have not been lucky enough to obtain them, however, it is time to go back to your neglected tie racks. What club, what society tie sits there, though neglected? What wondrous thing of jagged stripes, of ramping and roaring lions, of eagles, or penguins, or hippogriffs, is waiting for you to bring it once again to your collar and the light of public esteem? Of what sodality are you a member, with a cupboard of unsold ties in their office, waiting for purchasers whose money will fund their good work? As Claydon reminds us, England expects, and it is time for all of you to do your bit.