This Hepenstal coat of arms is formally blazoned (described) as: per chevron ermine and argent a chevron gules thereon three cinquefoils of the second between in chief a cross crosslet of the third and in base an eagle displayed sable (on a background of ermine and silver divided by a red chevron containing three silver five-petalled flowers with a red cross crosslet above and a black spread eagle below) The crest is formally blazoned as: on a wreath a pelican in her piety proper on the breast a cross crosslet gules (on a wreath a pelican in natural colour vulning, ie wounding itself with its beak to feed its chicks with its own blood, a symbol of a religious family, and on its breast a red cross crosslet). The motto VIRESCET VULNERE VIRTUS translates as "Virtue, when wounded, flourishes".

There has only ever been one official grant of arms to any member of a Hep family. This was to Ralph Anthony Dopping-Hepenstal (1823-1887) by the Ulster King of Arms on 1 July 1859. Ralph Dopping had married Diana Hepenstal in 1858 and, as a condition of his future inheritance from his father-in-law, had been required to change his name to Dopping-Hepenstal and to use the Hepenstal arms. Previously his father-in-law, the Rev Lambert Watson Hepenstall (1789-1859) of Altadore in Co. Wicklow, and his grandfather-in-law George Hepenstal (1764-1805) had unofficially used this Hepenstal coat of arms, but in 1859 its use by the Dopping-Hepenstal family was legitimised.

The Dopping-Hepenstals actually used the Hepenstal arms quartered with the Dopping arms

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