How Are County Flags Chosen?

A good question and not one that many people know

, a county flag is chosen with the public in mind to help give a county and its people a sense of identity and belonging to an area.

Flags have been known to be designed as part of competitions, by school children, by the elderly or by anyone who is part of the county. Then normally the flag design is selected by the use of a public vote and then this also has to be approved by the local county council.

However in Scotland the county flags must be authorised by Lord Lyon, the chief of the heraldic authority. Then the flags must be recorded in the public register (All Arms and Bearings in Scotland). This can be a very lengthy and costly process.

So flags can play a very important part in the community especially if they have been designed and chosen by local people, this gives members of the county a true sense of involvement and pride to belong to a wider family.

There is a nice story about how the Gloucestershire county flag came to be chosen in 2008. Gloucestershire not unlike some other English counties had no official flag to call its own. There was a banner of the County Arms available from flag manufacturers but the design itself was sole legal property of the county council not the county itself. So in accordance with the rules of English Heraldry it is illegal for anyone to fly it!

So to put this right the county's High Sheriff Jonathan Carr decided to hold a competition to design a flag. This competition was held to commemorate the 1000th anniversary of the county's existence.

The winner of the competition was Jeremy Bentall, his design comprised of a sky blue cross outlined in pale yellow with a grass green background. He has been known to have said that the green background represents the lush green rural countryside, the blue cross represents the river Severn and the pale yellow outline represents the yellow Cotswold stone. So now the people of Gloucestershire can fly a flag of their own.

You will find that most County flags try to incorporate some meaning and history of the area into their design, some displaying the county's coat of arms, others displaying a cross with colours which represent the county, even the County's football and rugby teams have been known to use the colours of their flag in their team colours.

by: Richard Johnson

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