The flag of Northamptonshire was the winning entry in a competition held in 2014 by the local county council, in conjunction with the Flag Institute, to select a flag for the county. The winning design, created by ABC member Brady Ells
was unveiled at a ceremony held County Hall in Northampton, on September 11th 2014. the day of its registration.
The genesis of the design submitted by Brady Ells had appeared several years previously when, a prolific designer of flags, he had toyed with a potential flag for the county based on the claret and gold sporting colours of several of the county’s teams and associations.
For the competition the design was amended with the addition of a black fimbriation representative of the county’s leather working industry. The county was linked with a rose emblem to at least 1665, when, heraldic historian C.W Scott-Giles reports, it appeared on a seal used by the county magistrates in Quarter Sessions and is believed to recall an historic association with the house of Lancaster: Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Lancastrian King Edward IV (reigned 1461– 1483) and ancestor of every English monarch since Henry VIII and every Scottish monarch since James V, was born at Grafton Regis in the county. A great many organisations in the county, especially sporting bodies, consequently feature a rose in their insignia and it naturally made its way onto the originally proposed flag design.
At the time of the competition the judging panel decided to create a new rose that would be unique to the county by combining various elements of stylisation and colour that were used by different county bodies. The splendid new uniquely Northamptonshire, rose was consequently the one used on the newly registered flag