Warwickshire Flags – Bear & Ragged Staff Flag, Bunting & Table Flags

The Warwickshire flag: the bear and ragged staff

The Warwickshire flag shows the bear and ragged staff, the badge the Earls of Warwick carried from the Middle Ages and the emblem that has stood for the county ever since, set on a red field. The bear chained to a rough-cut staff appears on the county council’s arms, on Warwickshire County Cricket Club’s badge and over pub doors from Alcester to Atherstone, and after a public vote the design was registered with the Flag Institute in 2016 as the official county flag. The registered pattern is our Warwickshire flag; the Warwickshire Old flag is the earlier way the bear and staff were drawn on flags around the county before registration, and it still suits a pole that has flown it for years or a display that wants the two side by side.

Warwickshire Day, 23 April

Warwickshire Day falls on 23 April, St George’s Day and the birthday of the county’s most famous son, so the bear flies over Stratford-upon-Avon for the Shakespeare birthday procession and over council buildings in Warwick, Leamington, Rugby and Nuneaton on the same morning. Through the summer it turns up at the Kenilworth Show, the Warwick Folk Festival, Warwick Castle’s jousting weekends, the Moreton Morrell and Shipston shows and at Edgbaston for a county match or a Test, and the historic county still reaches into Coventry, Solihull and Sutton Coldfield, where plenty of households fly it in preference to a metropolitan borough badge. The events calendar lists the civic dates each year.

Sizes, grades and fittings

The Warwickshire flag comes as a 20x12in for a hand pole, a desk stand or a car, a 3ft x 2ft for a wall or a short pole, a 5ft x 3ft for a 6m garden pole, a pub frontage or a float, and an 8ft x 5ft for a town hall, a cricket ground or a tall fixed pole. Flagtex is the printed woven-polyester grade for shows, matches and the 23rd; DuraFlag is the heavier knitted-polyester grade with reinforced hems and stitching for a flag that stays up through a Midlands winter. Both come with brass eyelets, and the DuraFlag can be ordered with a rope and toggle for a halyard pole.

Warwickshire bunting

Warwickshire bunting repeats the bear and ragged staff on every rectangular pennant in 3m and 9m lengths, and the Warwickshire Old bunting does the same with the earlier drawing. Three metres dresses a pub door or a classroom display board, nine metres runs the length of a village hall or a cricket tea tent, and several lengths tied together will cross a high street for a St George’s Day market.

Hand flags and table flags

Warwickshire hand flags are 9x6in on a wooden stick for the Stratford procession or the Edgbaston crowd, with the Old version alongside. On the desk there is the Warwickshire table flag with base at 6x4in, the 9x6in wooden table flag and the satin table flag for a council chamber, a school reception or a mayor’s parlour, each also available in the Old pattern. Worcestershire, Staffordshire, Leicestershire and the rest of the Midlands are under county flags.

Warwickshire flag FAQs

Popular in this collection

• Warwickshire Flag (20x12in to 8x5ft, 2 grades)from £7.99
• Warwickshire Bunting (3m & 9m)from £9.98
• Warwickshire Hand Flags£5.99
• Warwickshire Old Flagfrom £7.99
• Warwickshire Old Buntingfrom £9.98
• Warwickshire Table Flag with Basefrom £1.98
• Warwickshire Satin Table Flagfrom £5.00