County · North East England
Northumberland flies eight bold stripes of red and gold, split across the middle by a battlement-shaped line. The colours are ancient: they revive the arms attributed to the lost kingdom of Bernicia, rooted in Bede’s tale of a gold-and-purple banner over the tomb of Saint Oswald. The notched line recalls the greatest monument on the county’s soil — Hadrian’s Wall.
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| Country | England (United Kingdom) |
|---|---|
| Region | North East England |
| County town | Alnwick (administrative centre: Morpeth) |
| Emblem | Paly of eight, red and gold |
| Arms granted | 1951 (County Council) |
| Ancient kingdom | Bernicia / Northumbria |
Flag of Northumberland — paly of eight red and gold, per fess embattled counterchanged
The flag is a striking piece of heraldry: eight vertical stripes alternating gold and red, cut across the middle by an embattled line — a line shaped like the top of a castle wall — above and below which the colours swap places. Its blazon is Paly of eight Or and Gules per fess embattled all counterchanged, flown at a ratio of 5:8.
Though the pattern feels medieval, its life as a flag is recent: the design was taken from the county’s arms, released for public use as the flag of Northumberland in 1995, and later entered on the Flag Institute registry. It is now one of the most recognisable of all English county flags.
The colours reach back to the seventh century. Northumberland was the heart of Bernicia, the northern half of the great kingdom of Northumbria, which for a time dominated Anglo-Saxon England and gave it saints, scholars and the illuminated gospels of Lindisfarne.
The monk Bede, writing at Jarrow around 731, recorded that a banner of gold and purple was hung over the tomb of Saint Oswald, the warrior-king of Northumbria killed in 642. Medieval heralds, reaching for arms to give the vanished kingdom, turned that memory into bars of red and gold — and it is those attributed arms of Bernicia that the modern county flag flies once more.
The flag’s pattern was made official in the arms granted to Northumberland County Council in 1951, which took the ancient red-and-gold of Bernicia as their shield.
Blazon: Paly of eight Or and Gules per fess embattled all counterchanged. On the formal arms, each red bar is drawn as a run of separate, interlocking blocks — a deliberate echo of the masonry of Hadrian’s Wall, which runs across the county.
So the shield holds two ages at once: the red and gold of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom, and, in the shapes of its bars, the Roman wall that marked the edge of an empire. Few English counties carry so much history in so simple a pattern.
The flag of Northumberland is eight vertical stripes of gold and red, divided across the middle by an embattled line so that the colours reverse — blazoned Paly of eight Or and Gules per fess embattled all counterchanged. It is based on the arms of the county and was adopted as the county flag in the 1990s.
The red and gold come from the arms medieval heralds attributed to the ancient kingdom of Bernicia, itself inspired by Bede’s account of a banner of gold and purple hung over the tomb of Saint Oswald of Northumbria.
The monk Bede recorded in the 8th century that a banner of gold and purple hung over the tomb of King Oswald of Northumbria, venerated as a saint. Later heralds turned this memory into the striped red-and-gold arms of Bernicia, which the modern flag revives.
On the formal county arms the red bars are drawn as separate interlocking blocks, evoking the masonry of Hadrian’s Wall. On the flag this survives as the embattled line that divides the stripes across the middle.
The design comes from the arms granted to Northumberland County Council in 1951. It was released for use as the county flag in 1995 and later registered with the Flag Institute.
Last reviewed by the Emblema Mundi editorial team on September 20, 2026.