As I’ve mentioned before I have taken a great deal of influence from visits to Belgium. The lowland countries of The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg have contributed greatly to the development of heraldic art and this is beautifully clear when looking at their flag culture.

When you do visit any town in Belgium and you find the town hall you’ll also see a number of flags flying side by side – and importantly they are different flags! As example here is a photo that I took when on holiday to Leuven (the ancient University town and centre of brewing in Belgium) late last year.

With Belgium having such a deep and extensive heraldic tradition not only does the country have arms and a flag but so does it constituent areas, counties and even towns. The flags on the town hall in the photo show that they proudly display their Leuven (red with white horizontal stripe), Brabant (yellow lion on black), Flemish (black lion on yellow), Belgian (black, red and yellow vertical stripes) and European identities (yellow stars on blue).

A criticism often directed at flags and flag waving is that it can be very jingoistic and even xenophobic – like when certain groups appropriate flags and try and load often very negative political spin onto them. This can be perfectly true, the American flag culture that focuses so greatly on one flag can easily been seen as a bit over the top and insular. However flying different flags like this is the ideal way to combat jingoism. This is because this method is far more inclusive and friendly. Whilst I was in Belgium on that holiday most of the flags had no relevance to me as a Halesonian, Black Countryman and Briton, but the inclusion of the European Flag still made me feel welcome.

The method also allows the local (in this case a Leuven citizen) to be more understanding about their place in the world. The use of a unique flag for that town still makes the town special but flying it with others provides a sense of being a part of one big and rich tapestry rather than one place being better than anywhere else.

Finally, the use of flags side by side allows for a wider sense of pride as hinted at in the previous paragraph. As part of a big and rich heraldic tapestry if there is one particular place that you are proud of (say for instance your country) then the flags that fly next to it will gain some prestige simply by association. For example you can be proud of a level ‘up’ because it includes the constituent of which you are proud, or you can be proud of the level ‘down’ because it goes into the make up of the larger entity.

The combination of these effects creates a culture that actively discourages jingoism through making visitors feel welcome, giving locals a wider sense of identity and sharing out emotions of civic pride. It balances the need to be unique and individual with the fact that at a basic level we are all just humans walking around the surface of the planet – and we should be proud of both of these elements.

That is why that I think it is so important that I not only push for a Black Country tartan but also for the town flags – that way, where possible, community, county, country and continent flags can fly proudly side by side – bringing social positives to the wider world as well as the area itself.

Blakenhall (and not Blakenall!) is situated just south of Wolverhampton and has a very close bond with its neighbour, in no small part by being home to the Royal Wolverhampton School – whose coat of arms I have used as a base to my design but modified to reflect the history of the town.

I have taken the blue background with three golden orbs from the school arms but rather than leave the orbs plain they were ideally suited to being modified to include sunbeams, which of course denotes the Sunbeam motor car company that was once established in the region. The chevron, whilst being an element in the Royal School’s arms is also a common element amongst the arms of the other local schools, it is kept white to be bold against the vivid gold and blue background. As a final touch a black wolf head is added to the top of the chevron in order to symbolise the shared history that the town has with Wolverhampton Wanderers who originated from St Luke’s school in Blakenhall.

Bentley has a big historical claim to fame despite the fact that there is not much physical evidence left of it. However there is some notable heraldic evidence that exists and it only seemed right to base the Bentley flag on this.

When King Charles II was escaping after his defeat at the Battle of Worcester he stayed in Bentley Hall, which sadly no longer exists. Then a woman called Jane Lane helped smuggle the King to Bristol and then out of the country, she returned to Bentley but discovered that her role in the Kings escape had been discovered. She subsequently fled the country as well, joining the King’s court in exile. After the Kings restoration he rewarded Jane with the prestigious right to augment her coat of arms with the three royal lions of England in the canton.

As such, to commemorate this important moment in history the Bentley flag that I have designed is a stylised form of the augmented version of Jane Lane’s personal arms. I felt it was important to use the augmented arms in order to fully capture the reference to  these historic events but this caused some difficultly. Her arms had not been designed to incorporate a canton originally and as such when it was added the design looked a little awkward and this effect was only increased when transferring the design to the rectangular shape of a flag. As such I decided that the arms would need to be stylised by simplifying it. So I removed the chevron as that was the main element that physically clashed with the new canton and just made the overall look a bit too busy as well. This leaves a background of blue and yellow with counter changed stars (counter changing is where the background and foreground colours swap over areas of the flag or shield). In the canton I have added one royal lion as a reference to these important events and the role that a child of Bentley had in them, I found the inclusion of three lions  made the one corner of the flag look too cluttered and disproportionate to the rest of the flag.

So there we have two flags that show history at work in a design in different ways. One design references its comparatively modern history that all helped to develop the town at breathtaking pace and bring it to the fore of British football and the motor industry. Whilst the other design references one mighty historical event where the future of the country hung for one moment upon a small town in the Black Country.

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

These towns all have symbols that were used in the Aldridge-Brownhills civic coat of arms, and whilst there were other towns governed by this body it is these towns that have the extra bond due to heraldry. We have already seen the flags of Aldridge, Brownhills and Walsall Wood and they have all used the symbols utilised in that coat of arms – which leaves one symbol: the beacon of Great Barr. So here is the final family member with the beacon as the proud centre piece of the design, coloured silver and orange to reflect the badge of Great Barr school.

Further to that claim to fame the town can also pride itself on being the home to one of the foremost scientific societies of the Victorian age: the Lunar Society, who got their name as a result of meeting during full moons and are still going strong today. In honour of this, Great Barr has eight commemorative ‘moon stones’. I decided that not only including a reference to that would be fitting but also would provide a strong visual cue for the flag. I put eight moons in an orbiting placement around the beacon, though to have plain circles would not be a clear enough reference to the moon. As such I used each of the eight moons to show a different phase of the moon in the night sky, with the full moon taking priority positioned at the peak of the cycle and the top of the flag.

To finish off the flag I needed a field colour. The first thing that I thought of was black to tie in with the moon theme and contrast strongly with the silver and orange already chosen for the design. Researching more into the schools past I discovered some forms of their logo that were coloured green – this in turn made me think of the shade ‘Midnight Green’ which dovetails beautifully with the moon motif. When I first used the shade I wasn’t happy so I have modified it to be a lot darker, which provides a sharper contrast and finished off the flag very nicely.

Another flag with a family link is that of Heath Town, though its family relationship is much lighter than those described above. Heath Town’s name is a simplification of its original name of Wednesfield Heath, which we’ll see is referenced in the design.

The flag blends three distinct elements together – historic, sporting and academic. Beginning with the latter I found that the badge of Heath Park Business & Enterprise College to be 10 alternating rays of blue and white radiating out in a semi-circle from a school building on the bottom edge of the design. The school building would be a little intricate for a flag as well as being too specific to the college, but the rays were a wonderfully bold symbol and I elected to use them, though it transpired I would have to modify them a little.

On the sporting side I discovered that Heath Town Rangers football club have a simple logo based on a red ellipse, which gave me a colour and a shape to add to the mix. However if an ellipse were to be used then the background rays would not gel if they originated from a point on the bottom edge of the flag. So I took some license and doubled the rays over to make a gyronny (that starburst pattern) and placed the ellipse in the middle. A gyronny is usually 8, put this is a bit special, a gyronny of 20!

Red was a bit garish for the ellipse so I decided that white would look better and put a red centre-piece in instead. For this I turned to some historical knowledge and to the aforementioned fact that the town was called Wednesfield Heath. So to reflect this ancient association I added a Saxon coat of arms from the Wednesfield civic coat of arms, coloured it red and added it as the finishing piece to the Heath Town flag.

So there we have two great examples of how common heritage can create flags with common ‘genetics’ in different ways. The heritage between Wednesfield and Wednesfield Heath shows how one town can help generate the name of another in a paternal sort of way. Whilst with Great Barr the symbolic history it has with the other three towns gives it a shared experience that ties them together more like friends, cousins or even siblings. Both ways show how these shared heritages can be referenced and even highlighted within a design without losing any uniqueness – just like human families.

Sedgley Tartan

Beginning with Sedgley I felt that the best inspiration for a tartan was from their existing flag, which also makes use of a slightly altered town seal. This gave me some beautiful and even slightly unique colours to use. White and light blue are the dominant colours in the flag which I duly used, though I was very keen to make strong use of grey which references Sedgley beacon tower – a local landmark and centre piece of the towns seal. These three main colours are finished off with touches of green and gold also taken from the seal.

Again it only seemed fit to honour Pelsall with a tartan inspired by their flag which had in turn had inspired me. In this case the flag is simply black and white which would not only be great in terms of heritage but it would also make a very bold and exciting tartan. However I decided to add some flashes of colour to the design because black and white on its own would be a difficult pattern to be distinctive – both Northumbrian and Menzies being prominent black and white plaids – so highlights of other colours would serve to make the design more unique. I chose red as a nod to the towns football team (Pelsall Villa) and green which denoted both the cricket team as well as the beautiful common that the town is so proud of.

Pelsall Tartan

What is nice to see when looking at both the designs together is that the strong use of white gives both tartans a very classy and noble look. In tartan terms they look like ‘dress tartans’; those that were worn at the poshest events (dress Gordon probably being the best known example). This doesn’t make these proposals better than any of those that I’ve done for other towns, but I do believe it is a nice coincidental bond between Pelsall and Sedgley that symbolises the pride that they both share in their heritage.

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

With Wolverhampton I still maintain that the original design was a good one it has been rendered obsolete by the fact that all British flags should have a ratio of about 3:5. The reason for this is that when flags are flown together they all look good and uniform, a series of mis-matched sizes and shapes might detract from the beautiful sentiment of flying flags together. I do have some reservations about this rule, though on the whole it is sensible and more importantly it means that my current design, being a 1:1 ratio, would simply not be registered as an official flag.

Wolverhampton Flag

This has led me to designing the flag again, though I was determined not to waste my previous good work, as the stylized cross was still an interesting and meaningful emblem to use. The square shape of the cross put me in mind of a canton, which is the top left part of a flag, for example where the union flag is in the modern flags of Australia and New Zealand. This inspired me to use the cross that I had designed in such a way. The rest of the flag was coloured in the famous Wolverhampton gold, which makes the design hugely distinctive and distinguished.

This looked good though still a little plain, despite the cross, so I elected to put a symbol on the flag. The city’s symbolic heritage is so strong that it did not take very long to settle on what it should be – Wolves. I decided to go with three black wolves (one wolf would have looked good but not only did I feel that three looked better but it also was a more direct reference of the nickname ‘Wolves’). As for layout I remembered the older Wolverhampton Wanderers’ logos with three wolves leaping above each other, and this became the orientation.

As a result I feel that I’ve managed to not only make the best of a bad situation, but to turn it to my advantage. Not only does this flag incorporate all the same meaning as before, it now has even more!

With the Aldridge flag the reason for the redesign was less technical and more to do with the art and heritage in my original proposal. My main source of inspiration was the Aldridge-Brownhills coat of arms which I have been picking the relevant symbols from for a number of the towns that came under that civic area. The shells, brown hills and water came from Brownhills which I subsequently used for their flag proposal; the golden eagle was from Walsall Wood and is featured in the canton of that town’s flag proposal as well.

Aldridge Flag

Then I came to do a flag for Great Barr which is another town that is related to that family of towns in the area. The principal symbol for that town is of course Barr Beacon and I then realised that my Aldridge flag had already used the beacon symbol taken from the civic arms. Throughout all of my designs I have striven to ensure that the symbolism used is exclusive to the village, town or area in question in order to ensure both uniqueness and relevance for the town and the design.

As such I felt that the priority for using the beacon image should go to Great Barr, which of course gave me the opportunity to rework the Aldridge flag. So I went back to the civic coat of arms and established which elements were the appropriate ones for the town, and I was happy to discover that other than the beacon I had been correct otherwise. The gold and green fret work symbolised the wealth that came from Aldridge’s rural location whilst the blue fleur-de-lys was a reference to past heraldry originating from the church.

In the previous design I had really had to thin down the gold fret working so that I could make a centrepiece of the beacon but now I realised that I could make fretwork and the fleur-de-lys far more central to the design. Before I had used some artistic licence to incorporate two fleur-de-lys rather than the one that was on the civic arms but now I realised that I could have one central fleur-de-lys sitting upon a cross in the fretwork.

I have zoomed in on the fretwork in order to make it bold as well as to provide the biggest area on which to put the fleur-de-lys, but I have balanced it so that it is still easily discernable that this is fretworking. The result of all is that the Aldridge flag now has a purer and more relevant rationale and a design that is bolder and more unique too.

Really I have to conclude that I’ve been very lucky that the small number of flags that I have had to redesign so far have provided me with the opportunity to make such good redesigns. When we next look at town flags I will showcase the flag that caused the revision of Aldridge and that will complete its ‘family’ of designs – Great Barr.

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

Starting with Penn, the easiest decision was what charge to add. The name Penn is probably derived from the old Welsh word for hill, this hill likely being the one upon which St Bartholomew’s Church stands. The attributed coat of arms for St Bartholomew is that of three daggers/swords, which has duly also become the badge of the Penn Cricket team. Thus the charge for the flag was decided.

Penn Flag

I did become a little stuck when trying to decide on the colour for the field. Blue is used by the cricket team yet red would have been a nice nod to the Welsh associations the town has through its name. As such I felt a field division might be the best way of utilising both colours. To reference the ‘hill’ meaning behind its name I decided that a diagonal division would give the impression of a slope. The slope heads to the top right to mirror the north east rise to the real hill. The lower ‘hill’ section is coloured red, to signify that the word is welsh whilst the ‘upper’ part is given a blue from the cricket badge which errs towards a medium indigo-blue.

Blackheath was a similarly simple flag to design, however in contrast with the decisions taken on the Penn flag, the colours were easy to decide upon but the detail in the charge required more thought.

During my research there did not seem to be much in the way of representative symbols or colours for the town, bar those employed by Blackheath Town football club, so I decided to use these in some way. Their strips are orange tops with green shorts, which effectively decided both the colour for the flag and how to decide the field – a horizontal division with an orange upper and a green lower half.

Blackheath Flag

The charge appeared at first to be an easy choice, the club badge bearing a Blackbird which provides a reference to the towns name. The problem arose when I had to choose how to represent the blackbird, as the club badges depiction is quite realistic and not overly heraldic. I decided to draw a heraldic form but I felt the need to modify the birds pose, as I was changing the art style to suit a clearer, more dynamic medium I felt that the pose of the bird should similarly be clearer and more dynamic. As such I elected to have the bird with its wings raised as though preparing for flight. If this is seen as sacrilege it can easily be changed but I am hopeful that my reasoning is not only sensible but produces a more effective design for the medium of a flag.

The final touch was to place the bird on the flag, which I did on the upper half in the centre. This was simply as the black colour of the bird did not show up effectively against the green, plus this novel positioning makes the flag a little more unique and distinctive. Once again proving that very simple designs can be just as worthwhile as their more intricate relations!

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

Most council bodies around the country have some sort of award system, including the four boroughs that make up the Black Country. Such systems are very important social symbols, as they allow recognition to be given to people who have worked hard within a community or particular area. This in turn provides an achievement to aspire to for other members of that area. This ties in very well to my goals of providing things that allow the Black Country and its people to transcend their current state and strive for betterment.

Creating a symbol and using it in such a way is by no means a new idea. You only have to look at the New Years Honours lists to see that the benefits of such an idea are well understood and utilised on a national level.

It is from this that I drew some inspiration for the idea of a Black Country honour. One national recognition of achievement and effort is a knighthood, andwhen knighted one becomes part of a particular order, which usually is related to a specific area. In the UK the most senior of these are the Order of the Garter (for England), Order of the Thistle (for Scotland) and the Order of St Patrick (for Ireland).

Now I must make clear that I am not proposing to create an entire order, after all the Black Country is not a nation. However, I do think that modelling some form of civic style award on this would work very well – The Order of the Ommer.

The word ‘Ommer’ of course being Black Country dialect for hammer, making use of the areas heritage as well as an element that appears in the heraldic emblem that I designed. Such an honour could be conferred by the joint mayors of each borough and denoted with the presentation of a small ceremonial hammer.

This way we can create a practical mechanism of recognising the talents of people across the entire Black Country, and through the careful use of meaning and symbols we can tie-in to the prestige that other awards can give. Making working for the community and striving for honour and recognition within the Black Country more appealing as well as rewarding.

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

Streetly Flag

The roman heritage was an irresistible hook on which to base the design of a flag, the first thing that came to my mind when thinking of roman symbolism is of course the imperial eagle. As it happened this was a very fortunate icon to utilise in the design as when I researched the towns institutions I discovered that the cricket club logo was an orange eagle/phoenix creature. I elected to use the eagle and give it a yellow-orange colouring in order to tie it closely to the cricket clubs badge. To complete the nod to the Roman Empire I used a red background.

From this I felt that I should emphasise the ‘Street’ element of the name of the town in the design. As such I decided to place a black band over the top of the design, the prominence of its positioning showing how important it is and that it is based on Roman foundations (the eagle behind the band). To further identify the street in question I aligned it from bottom left to top right to parallel the real Icknield Street which runs from Gloucestershire (south west) to Yorkshire (north east). The golden horse shoe and white rose represent those two counties respectively.

Next is Tividale, the village associated with the town of Tipton. Rather than a design from first principles as the Streetly one was, this flag was more of a creative blend between different institutions – primarily the football team and a variety of schools in the area.

Tividale Flag

The blue and yellow colour scheme, whilst not universal, was reasonably common (appearing in the badges of the football club, Oakham primary school and Tividale community school), so that subsequently became the colour rationale for the flag.

Drawing inspiration from Tividale Hall Primary school badge, the flag was quartered. It should be noticeable though that the top half is a lot larger, the bottom half has no charges (extra symbols) and the dividing line between top and bottom is wavy. This has been done in order to reference the fact that the Netherton canal tunnel runs underneath Tividale. So the wavy line represents water and the smaller bottom half of the flag represents the canal being beneath the town.

I had to decide which quarters were to be coloured blue and which to be coloured yellow though, however not even this should be an arbitrary choice! Instead I opted to use meaning to make the choice. Trees or oak leaves appear in either the badges of institutions (the football club) or in their name (Oakham Primary) – in the football badge they are coloured blue on a yellow field. This made me feel that the oak should be referenced by the colour blue on a yellow background. Looking back at the inspiration for the quartering, Tividale Hall School, it became apparent that the tree on their arms was on the left hand side of the shield. As such that became where the oak leaf was placed on the flag. This left a blue space on the right, which became easy to fillwhen viewing the badge of Tividale Community School – a yellow sun on a blue background.

Of final note for this design; I used a oak leaf rather than an entire tree. This was as I felt a full tree would be too difficult to make easily recognisable as an oak. Plus the fact that the sun was such a simple and elegant version, the contrast between that and a complex tree would not have made a harmonious symbol.

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

This week we will again look at options for a name for the Black Country Flag, having looked at ideas derived from religion and geography already. In the last article looking at geography we hit upon the idea of ‘The Coal Cross’ and this may give us a clue as to another area for examination.

Black Country Flag

The cross that I suggested as part of that title is a part of the construction of the design, so the actual design of the flag itself may provide further possibilities for a name. This method may at first appear to be rather dull but in reality flags named or nicknamed in such a way can become quite famous and generate strong emotions by their names alone. Perhaps the best examples are the American ‘Stars and Stripes’ or the French ‘Tricolour’ – a flag that influenced generations of flags after it. This may be to do with the idea that the name of the flag is visually obvious to the design, creating a stronger mental association with the flag in ones mind.

So looking at my proposal for inspiration there are several elements that could be considered in this method. Simply the colours might be a good idea, certainly an idea used widely across the globe. Although a name with four colours does not really roll off the tongue, using fewer feels like ignoring parts of the meaning. Black and red would be a good combination as it links to the Elihu Burritt quote “Black by Day and Red by Night”, though red isn’t a dominant colour in the design Colours do not appear to be the best name for this flag. Plus I would argue that any flag named purely after colours is lacking a very meaningful name.

Other than that we can examine the actual symbols, which in our case leaves us looking at the two crosses – the geared cross and the chain cross. In fact these two descriptions give us two good possible names! My personal preference is for ‘The Chain Cross’ as I feel it flows better.

However, there is one major issue with the use of such a name… it is completely dependant upon the design used. If my proposal does not become the Black Country flag the name probably could not be transferred as the meaning and relation would be broken. Nonetheless it remains a candidate, indeed both ‘The Chain Cross’ and ‘The Geared Cross’ remain as candidates. Continuing over the weeks I’ll write about more possibilities that I have thought of as well as those suggested by you the reader.

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