Four houses in Essex, situated respectively at Leigh, Barking, Chadwell Heath, and Nazing, now make use of the CROOKED BILLET as their sign. Twenty years ago another did so, and there is still a beer-house so styled at Felstead. There is also an OLD CROOKED BILLET at Walthamstow, and a CROWN AND CROOKED BILLET (doubtless merely an impaled sign) at Woodford Bridge. It is not by any means clear what this sign was derived from. Larwood and Hotten confess that they “have not been able to discover any likely origin; it may have been originally a ragged staff, or a pastoral staff.... Frequently the sign is represented by an untrimmed stick suspended above the door.” Mr. H. W. King writes that the sign existed at Leigh in the earlier part of last century, being used by a small house which still stands, but is not the inn now displaying the sign in that town. He says: “The first mention I find of the existing inn is an admission dated 1765, and referring to a certain tenement adjoining eastward to the lane leading to the CROOKED BILLET. This previous house of the same name is a small plaster cottage. It must have been a very mean little public-house. At some period its sign was transferred to the present house in the main street, which was formerly a gentleman’s residence, and on the same property as the cottage.” Mr. King adds: “I incline to think that the CROOKED BILLET was originally a _fess dancetté_ or a _chevron_--more probably the former--and that it is, therefore, an heraldic sign. The sign in this town was originally a pictorial one, and certainly it rudely represented the former. Now that it is written a different origin is assigned to it here; but there are so many others that I rather incline to the heraldic origin. They said here formerly that faggots were shipped from the wharf opposite the present house. But so they were from other wharves.”