I can already hear the cries… “but Quinton ay the Black Country, it’s Brummagem!” Which I concede is true… sort of. I am writing this entry back in November when Quinton is celebrating its centenary of Birmingham annexation. Before 1909 the village was actually apart of Halesowen, which is the Black Country – plus there are records of coal mining in the Quinton. As such I consider the village to be a geographical and historical part of the Black Country, regardless of who it is administered by.

Many flags make use of blue and white wavy lines to denote water, perhaps too many, but Quinton has some very strong geological associations with water, mainly that it is situated along the length of the national watershed – every drop of rain that falls to east of the watershed flows eastwards and those that fall to the west flow west. The use of a water background to the flag therefore explains itself. The central chevron is representative of both Mucklow Hill which Quinton is built upon but also the alternative name of the town ‘Ridgacre’ (as a chevron resembles a ridge). The resulting separation of the background into three parts represents either side of the watershed, and Bourne Brooke through the centre, which is the stretch of water separating Quinton from Bartley Green.

Upon the Chevron are three golden symbols. The fleur-de-lys comes from Halesowen’s coat of arms and represents the association those two towns have, it is placed on the left to show that Halesowen is west of Quinton. On the lower right is a bishops mitre from the coat of arms of Birmingham. Finally at the pinnacle of the chevron is a golden sickle which bears two meanings. Firstly is the historical connection to agriculture as Quinton was mainly remote farmland for most of its history with many place names within the village echoing that. Also due to Quinton’s great elevation it is sometimes referred to as ‘Little Russia’. Admittedly the sickle was a soviet/communist symbol rather than technically Russian, but it does fit the agricultural element well so I elected to use it.

The second flag to look at today is Bloxwich. Another town not to have any official existing symbols but it soon became very apparent that many of the towns institutions had related imagery. The rugby club, cricket club and the new ‘TARDIS’ monument in the town all make prominent use of a tree. This comes from the local legend of the tree outside the pub that may grant the wishes made under its branches. This left me in a quandary – trees are not things best suited to heraldic art in my opinion. They are far too fussy and detailed, nowhere near clean and stylized enough to fit in with other heraldic symbols. Not that this has stopped people using them in such a way but I’ve never been impressed with the results.

So I decided to try and make the tree more heraldic looking, and I found inspiration from ‘Lord of the Rings’, which is only appropriate given the books connections with the Midlands! The film uses rather nicely stylized trees as the badge of Gondor, I felt that this was such a beautiful style and elected to emulate it. Taking the idea of the ‘Wishing Tree’ I designed a symbol with the two main branches of the tree crossing – just like fingers crossed for luck. I coloured it gold to represent the ‘TARDIS’ monument and placed it centrally on a green band with red and white bands further out, the colours representing the sporting colours of the town.

The result of both designs is the use of heraldic symbols that were appropriate to the town even if they were not particularly popular with myself. With professional and careful thought turning any difficulties to my advantage, I believe I have come up with stylistic and appropriate symbols for both areas, and in the process have created something unique and beautiful.

Article is written by Phillip Tibbets, researcher of Heraldic Art and co-founder of Heartland Heritagewear