A chain on black, white and red: the flag of the Black Country was designed by an 11-year-old girl in 2012.
Every fact about the flag, each with what it means.
Normal flagFIAV symbol: the form of the flag.
CivilFIAV symbol: who may fly the flag.The flag in the words of vexillology and heraldry.
It is a rectangular field with a 3:5 ratio divided into three parts by a white triangle that rises from the lower edge and reaches the top with its point cut off.
Each element and how many of the 1,390 flags in the catalogue carry it. In yellow, the rarest.
How it was born, how it has changed and what it means.
The Black Country, the ‘Black Country’, is the industrial district west of Birmingham, in England. Its flag, black, white and red with a chain, was designed by an 11-year-old girl.
In 2012 the Black Country Living Museum, an open-air museum of industrial life, called a competition to create the flag of the district. It was the year of Elizabeth II’s jubilee and of the London Olympic Games, and a committee of Parliament was encouraging every region to have its own. About 1,500 people voted and Gracie Sheppard, a pupil at Redhill School in Stourbridge, won. The flag was presented on 14 July 2012.
It has not changed since 2012.
Black and red
the American writer Elihu Burritt described the district as ‘black by day and red by night’, because of the smoke and the fire of its factories.
White triangle
the glass and iron furnaces, cone-shaped, that filled the landscape.
Chain
the industry of the area, famous for making chains.
It was presented on the day the first Newcomen steam engine turned 300, raised in 1712 near Dudley. That is why 14 July is Black Country Day.
The anchors and chains of the Titanic were made in Netherton, right in the Black Country.
In 2015 and 2017 some voices asked to change the design because the area made chains for slavery. Others defended it as a tribute to the work of the district, and Prime Minister Theresa May congratulated the author in Parliament.
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Test what you have read about the flag of Black Country.
Text based on the article “Flag of the Black Country” from the Spanish Wikipedia, published under the licence CC BY-SA 4.0.
Sources consulted:
Flag image: Hogweard, Wikimedia Commons · Public domain.
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