The city of Montague, Michigan also claims to have the largest standard-design weather vane, being a ship and arrow which measures 48 feet tall, with an arrow 26 feet long. Co-locating both instruments allows them to use the same axis (a vertical rod) and provides a coordinated readout.Īccording to the Guinness World Records, the world's largest weather vane is a Tío Pepe sherry advertisement located in Jerez, Spain. Modern aerovanes combine the directional vane with an anemometer (a device for measuring wind speed). An early example of this was installed in the Royal Navy's Admiralty building in London - the vane on the roof was mechanically linked to a large dial in the boardroom so senior officers were always aware of the wind direction when they met. Įarly weather vanes had very ornamental pointers, but modern wind vanes are usually simple arrows that dispense with the directionals because the instrument is connected to a remote reading station. The weather vane of St Peter upon Cornhill is not in the shape of a rooster, but a key while St Lawrence Jewry's weather vane is in the form of a gridiron. The City of London has two surviving examples. Ī few churches used weather vanes in the shape of the emblems of their patron saints. Īnother theory says that the cock was not a Christian symbol but an emblem of the sun derived from the Goths. One alternative theory about the origin of weathercocks on church steeples is that it was an emblem of the vigilance of the clergy calling the people to prayer. The Bayeux Tapestry of the 1070s depicts a man installing a cock on Westminster Abbey. Īs a result of this, the cock gradually began to be used as a weather vane on church steeples, and in the 9th century Pope Nicholas I ordered the figure to be placed on every church steeple. Pope Gregory I said that the cock ( rooster) "was the most suitable emblem of Christianity", being "the emblem of St Peter", a reference to Luke 22:34 in which Jesus predcits that Peter will deny him three times before the rooster crows. Peter's Basilica or old Constantinian basilica. Pope Leo IV had a cock placed on the Old St. The oldest existing weather vane with the shape of a rooster is the Gallo di Ramperto, made in 820 CE and now preserved in the Museo di Santa Giulia in Brescia, Lombardy. The eight-metre-high structure also featured sundials, and a water clock inside. Below this was a frieze adorned with the eight Greek wind deities. The Tower of the Winds on the ancient Greek agora in Athens once bore on its roof a wind vane in the form of a bronze Triton holding a rod in his outstretched hand, rotating as the wind changed direction.