‘Wolverhampton? Aldridge?’ you may cry, ‘but you’ve already done those flags!’ I cannot deny that but there is good reason for having revisited the designs. Over time my knowledge of the heraldic arts has grown and matured, and whilst I remain happy with the vast majority of my designs there are some I wish to revisit.

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